The Grimmoire
by Captain Fantastic
Summary: "So you spend your whole life giving these people their happily ever after, but when do you get yours?"...A novella about hope, disillusionment, and the happy endings for which we are all so desperate.
1. Chapter 1

**(A/N: This novella was written for the ACA Ficathon. Prompt was supplied by Ellsbeta, so here's to you, love. I hope you like it.)**

**Caution: Rated T for some adult themes. The world is not pretty, my friends. Sometimes we have to hold our breaths and just dive in anyway. **

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Harriet was sobbing hysterically by the goose-pond when the golden-haired man sat down next to her and offered her a handkerchief.

"Who are y-y-you?" she managed, hiccupping wildly through her tears.

"You can call me Adrian," he said simply. "Are you having a rough day, Harriet?"

She looked at him suspiciously through her golden bangs and blew her nose into the handkerchief. The sound so strongly resembled a honking goose that some of the fat fowls waddled forward expectantly. Harriet pushed them away in irritation.

"How do you doe by dabe?" she demanded, keeping the handkerchief pressed against her stuffy nose.

"You look like a Harriet." He waved his hand as if to banish the bothersome question. "I'm not here to hurt you, Harriet, and I don't want anything from you. I want to help you."

Harriet regarded him for a moment in silence, her brow still furrowed in suspicion. He had kind eyes, the color of summer blueberries—like the ones she used to pick at home, before all of this. She sniffled and blew her nose again, but more daintily this time. He was undeniably attractive, and judging by his neatly pressed shirt and navy waistcoat, he was also well-to-do. She wanted to make a good impression.

"I'm listening," she said, nudging a curious goose away with her toe.

"I know you're in a hopeless situation." He leaned in slightly, not enough to breach propriety, but certainly enough to create an almost tangible air of confidence between them. "I can help you, Harriet."

Harriet checked her breathing and looked at him from the corner of her eye. She liked the way he said her name—unceremoniously, as if it were more familiar to him than his own.

"How?" she asked in a whisper, not bothering to deny that she needed help. One minute with this stranger had sent her emotions into a spiral, and she couldn't help but think—what if this was her proverbial prince, come to save her from this nightmare? She was on tenterhooks, awaiting his next word.

"You have to tell Mr. Nichols who you really are." His words were so flat, so ordinary, so…obvious, that his spell over her immediately dissolved.

Harriet started crying again.

"She said she would killlll meeee!" Her words were elongated with her sobs, and she made use of the handkerchief again.

"Alice can't hurt you, if you just tell Mr. Nichols—"

Harriet climbed to her feet, tripping first over her skirts and then over her herding crook. She flung the soiled handkerchief to the ground and pointed a trembling finger at him.

"You can't tell him!" she cried. "You can't tell _anyone_! How do you even know?" The sudden, utter absurdity of it made her laugh shortly. Some stranger was snooping around her miserable life, and instead of drawing any obvious conclusions, she was ready for him to sweep her off her feet. It was his eyes, she told herself; they were disarming.

"Harriet, calm down." He stood up slowly. There was faint knit in his brow, and Harriet realized he was studying her, probably trying to decide how she could be manipulated further.

Harriet's newfound cynicism was strangely comforting to her. She drew herself up to her full, unimpressive height—still two heads shorter than this man who called himself Adrian—and waved her finger in his face.

"I don't know who you are, or how you know all this, but you had better leave me alone...or…or…" She stopped. The only thing she could do was try to sic the geese on him, but that did not sound particularly threatening. Besides, the little blighters were horribly unreliable. So instead, Harriet turned without another word and headed back to the manor at a brisk walk, hoping that he wouldn't follow—though a very, very small part of her hoped that he would. She didn't know how much longer she could live as a goose girl while the maidservant Alice reveled in her stolen status.

Adrian brushed a few goose feathers from his waistcoat and checked his pocket watch. He had hoped to be home in time for dinner, but that seemed unlikely. He sighed irritably.

"You courting Harriet, mister?"

Adrian whirled around in surprise.

"Conrad," he said. It was less a greeting, and more a general acknowledgment.

Conrad didn't ask how the stranger knew his name. He just stared expectantly, waiting for the answer to his question.

"I'm not courting her," Adrian said. "I'm trying to help her."

Conrad snorted.

"What is it?" Adrian cocked his head slightly, trying to interpret the boy's response.

"She might be beyond help, that's all." He shrugged.

"Meaning?"

"She talks to her horse."

"Does it talk back?"

Conrad blinked, disconcerted by the immediate and inane reply.

"No…"

Adrian sighed.

"I suspected as much."

"She talks to the wind too, and her hair. More than a bit touched, I'd say." Conrad tapped his temple with a knowing expression on his face.

"Well, it was bound to come down to that eventually. There's only so much magic left to go around."

Conrad narrowed his eyes, beginning to suspect that the stranger was a bit daft as well. Adrien didn't seem to notice. He glanced toward the heavens in thought for several moments, and then nodded to himself.

"Does she talk to her horse a lot?"

"Sure, every day."

"Good." Adrien left without a farewell. His long strides carried him to the manor quickly, and he did not even bother having the manservant announce him.

"Ah. Mr. Edgars, have you learned anything?" Mr. Nichols leaned over his desk, fingers interlaced in front of him. "My son came in earlier to tell me that Harriet asked him to call her Alice. She said it is her nickname. Is that not strange? I find it strange, and I'm growing increasingly uneasy about this whole affair. She just doesn't have the _air_ of the old money that she supposedly came from. You understand that there's an _air_, I'm sure, Mr. Edgars."

Adrian regarded him silently, wondering how much time they had, how much longer Mr. Nichols would be talking, and how offended he would be if Adrian simply interrupted. He decided to hazard it.

"Mr. Nichols—"

"Every time I see that goose girl, I grow more convinced that there is something about her…perhaps that air. You know she arrived with this Harriet-Alice character? It's all very suspicious. The next time I arrange a marriage, the bride will be from this country, so I can at least _meet_ the girl first."

"Mr. Nichols—"

"I'm so glad that you arrived when you did, Mr. Edgars. What is it that you do for a living? No matter, I'm certain that you'll be able to get to the bottom of this. You have that air, you see, and—"

"Mr. _Nichols_." Adrian raised his voice to a level of irritation, and the wealthy old landowner blinked, presumably hearing the interruption for the first time.

Adrian took a breath to regain his equilibrium. This proved difficult in the face of the man's incessant jabbering, which Adrian had been enduring for several days now.

"Mr. Nichols, if you would please accompany me to the stables, I think we can put an end to all of this straightaway."

"The stables? Whatever for?"

"I have a feeling the goose girl will be telling her troubles to her favorite confidant, and if we are lucky you'll hear everything you need to know."

Mr. Nichols frowned in confusion.

"But why in the stables?"

Adrian just smiled and led the way.

* * *

"So the King heard it all and welcomed the goose girl, who was really the princess, into his home with open arms."

"Well, he's not a king—just a very rich man, and Harriet is just an heiress of old money from the West." Adrien stretched and yawned, propping his black polished boots atop his orderly desk.

"And the princess and her prince lived happily ever after."

"Or as happy as they can be, with one of them too dense to tell a maidservant from a lady, and the other too daft to notice that her horse isn't talking back."

"A bit cynical, don't you think, Mister—?" The man who was sprawled lazily on the settee cocked his head and grinned. "Who were you this time, anyway?"

"Mr. Edgars." Adrian sighed and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. "You weren't there, Rance. You didn't see the look in her eyes."

"Unrequited love, was it?" Rance sat up and winked. His dark eyes twinkled with mischief, and his jet black hair, grown too long around his ears, was tousled and boyish—a stark contrast to Adrian's neatly trimmed head of golden hair.

"More like mild psychosis," Adrian said.

"Same thing."

Adrian grinned halfheartedly, more out of habit than amusement. He swung his legs off the desk and pulled open the top left drawer.

"Back to the grind, then," Rance said, sounding disappointed. He watched in silence as Adrian set a thick, leather-bound tome on the desktop and began flipping through the pages. "We really need a holiday."

"We? You never do anything." Adrian glanced up and flashed a smile, then returned to his study of the yellowing pages in front of him. The variegated collection of handwriting swam before his eyes in a haze of black ink. The columns of numbers, resembling an accounting ledger, suddenly seemed completely illegible. He hadn't realized how tired he was.

"I never do anything because I'm filthy rich," Rance said. "I don't have to do anything." He flicked a piece of lint from the cuff of his sleeve, grinning when Adrian shut the antiquated book. Rance jumped to his feet and pulled a decanter and two glasses from the liquor cabinet.

"I wish my sense of duty were as easy to ignore as yours." Adrien rubbed his temples.

"We can easily remedy that with a trip to the bank. I'm assuming the fortune your father left you is still there, gathering dust?"

Adrian shot him a deprecatory glance and said nothing. Rance sighed and poured the scotch, pushing a glass across the desk to his friend as a peace offering.

"I suppose I can't complain too much," he said, taking a sip from his own glass. "You kept the townhouse." He waved his hand to indicate the opulent, mahogany-furnished study.

"Where else would you hide from your latest female conquest?" Adrian asked wryly, taking a drink.

"Where else indeed." Rance plopped back down on the settee, setting his drink on the lamp stand. "Seriously, though, why don't we take that new passenger train somewhere? I've heard you can rent out an entire railcar, if you have the right sort of money."

"I can't. I have to record these numbers." Adrian snatched up his fountain pen and forced himself to reopen the book.

Rance groaned.

"I'm sure the damsels in distress and the breadcrumb-tossing waifs can survive without you for a week or two."

"That's the point, Rance. They can't." Adrian ran his finger down a column, his lips moving faintly as he studied the numbers. He penned the date into the proper blank, along with a few other numbers that would have appeared random to anyone else.

"Right," Rance said, rolling his eyes. "Because you're the only one who can decipher the _Grimmoire_ and predict the next cycle of whatever fairy tale is going to happen next, so you can save the day and right the wrongs and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera…" Rance moved his hand like a talking puppet, clearly not impressed.

"I told you not to call it the _Grimmoire_," Adrian said, choosing to ignore the rest of the speech.

"Well, you wouldn't let me call it the _Professional Hero's Guide to a Mastering of Folk Tales_ either, so what would you suggest?"

"It doesn't have a name, so stop trying to give it one. That's my suggestion."

"Come on, Adrian, I put a lot of thought into that name. It's a play on 'grimoire' and those German brothers. The historical and the contemporary."

"First of all, the book is not a magical textbook from the Middle Ages. Secondly, the Grimm brothers butcher the folk tales more often than not. Thirdly, you've never read a history book in your life." Adrian went back to his work, considering the subject closed.

It remained closed for a full thirty seconds, and then Rance spoke again, grinning wickedly.

"So _The Professional Hero's Guide_ is out as well?"

"I've told you a thousand times: I'm not a professional hero."

"Just the mysterious stranger who always arrives in the nick of time with a happily ever after for the unhappy people, and then returns home for a glass of scotch with his incredibly handsome and witty friend, just to repeat the whole thing in the morning."

Adrian glanced up from his work.

"That was very clever. How long did it take you to come up with it?"

Rance shrugged.

"I've been here all day, avoiding Miss Green, so I've had plenty of time. Too rehearsed?"

"Too wordy. I lost your point halfway through."

Rance shrugged again, and Adrian returned to his study of the book.

"So what is tomorrow's tale?" Rance asked resignedly, after a few minutes of silence. "Not another Juniper Tree, I hope. All of that decapitation and cannibalism and falling millstones is a nasty business."

Adrian made a few more notations in the margins and sat back.

"Actually, it looks like there won't be anything until next week."

"Perfect." Rance stood up and downed the rest of his scotch. "We'll purchase our own personal railcar to celebrate. I'll even introduce you to Miss Green. I have a feeling your golden-haired, blue-eyed heroism will be exactly the temptation she needs to put me out of her mind."

"Are you regretting your lifestyle choice of dark-haired, dark-eyed, independently wealthy philanderer?" Adrian clasped his hands behind his head and stifled a yawn.

"Never. I just wish I wasn't so unforgettable." Rance flashed a rakish grin.

"At any rate, I don't have time to gallivant across the country with you." Adrian carefully replaced the book in its drawer and doused the reading lamp. "I have to meet with Mr. Hadley again tomorrow. I'm hoping to have everything resolved with him and Mrs. Hadley by month's end."

"Of course." Rance took up his waistcoat from the arm of the settee and slid into it. "Well, try not to get cursed by any witches."

"You know that magic is all but dead by now, Rance. Witches and dragons and fairies were adventures for Charles and Hiram."

"Your predecessors get talking horses and enchanted princesses, and you get normal horses and insane heiresses. It doesn't seem fair."

"The tales recycle; the magic doesn't. It's a fact of life." Adrian shrugged.

"I'm glad you're so well-adjusted," Rance said dryly. He buttoned up his waistcoat and headed down the stairs.

Adrian saw him to the front door, still clutching his half-empty glass of scotch.

"I'll call the coach for you," he said.

"It's a nice night. I'll walk." Rance threw on his greatcoat, placed his hat firmly on his head, and pulled an umbrella from the stand. It was not a nice night at all. In fact, it smelled strongly of rain.

Adrian eyed him.

"You're going to peek in the window to see if Miss Green is still there, aren't you."

"A coach would make far too much noise for stealth's sake. I might come back for another drink or two, if she's still there."

"The guest room is always set for you."

"I know." Rance tipped his hat and left, whistling as he went.

Adrian shut the polished oak door behind his friend and glanced around his late father's home. The portraits and furniture were immaculate, kept so by Cynthia, the only maid he employed. The rooms were neat but rarely used. Adrian's life inside the townhouse was limited to his bedroom and his study. Through the parlor windows, he could catch glimpses of the light and life of the outside world, always tempting, but he could never give in. There was always work to do.

He climbed the stairs and lit the lamp in his bedroom, unwillingly recalling the glint of madness in Harriet's eye. He wondered how she and her new husband could ever be happy, when they knew nothing of each other.

That night he dreamt in numbers—dates and street numbers and ancient ciphers. The language of the _Grimmoire_.


	2. Chapter 2

The illicit activities that occurred at the third house on Eastside Street were largely overlooked by the city. The very existence of the dark old house was taboo, so no one ever paid it mind—even though coaches came and went at all hours of the night and the sounds of revelry coming from the house were sometimes hard to ignore.

The stars were just beginning to peek through the night veil when one such coach rumbled down the street and came to a stop outside the house. Adrian stepped out and gave orders to the driver to wait. Rance hopped to the ground after him, whistling as he looked up and down the street.

"Would you stop the whistling?" Adrian was agitated, which generally happened when he was nervous.

"No."

"Maybe you should just stay with the coach."

"You need to relax, my friend."

"Rance, I let you trail along because you promised not to get in the way."

"Right, I'm the soul of discretion. What are you doing?"

Adrian paused halfway to the front door and turned.

"Exactly what it looks like I'm doing."

Rance shook his head and took his friend's arm, guiding him off the front walk and toward the back of the house.

"Never use the front door—not if you're expecting service."

"We're _not_ expecting service." Adrian glanced suspiciously at his friend. "And why do you seem so familiar with this?"

Rance didn't reply, but Adrian knew the look on his face.

"Rance! A _brothel_? I thought you had more class."

"Calm down. It was a long time ago. I was young and foolish and still trying to find my purpose in life."

"As opposed to now."

"I like to think I've grown." Rance grinned and knocked twice on the back door.

The woman who opened the door was gaunt and pale. Her bony form was draped in a pink silk robe, and a faded blue chemise peeked out from beneath. The smoky, golden-lit interior darkened her shape in the doorway, and a musty mixture of perfume and stale liquor immediately saturated the air around the two new arrivals.

"'Ello, dollies." She leaned against the doorframe and took a long drag from her cigarette. "Whaddya got in mind?"

"We're here to see Snow White," Adrian said, clearing his throat as the woman exhaled into his face.

She looked between him and Rance, her eyes dark and beady. Her features twisted into a frown, and she took another drag.

"'Course you are. Who isn't?" she muttered, stepping aside to let them in. "Her _majesty_ is upstairs. You'll probably have to wait your turn." She started laughing, but it turned into a nasty, wet cough.

Rance moved past her quickly, and Adrian tried to follow, but she grabbed a handful of his coat and pulled him back a step.

"Come on, mister." Her whisper was throaty and unpleasant. "Why don't you let Queenie give you what you need?"

"I'm sorry, miss," he said, flustered. He freed himself to hurry after Rance, and Queenie's mumbled curses followed him down the corridor.

"This place is…shadier than I remember," Rance said, leading the way toward the stairs.

"I'm sure when you were a patron it was the epitome of refinement."

"And now we'll be lucky if we make it out without contracting consumption."

They stopped at the base of the narrow stairs and waited for two men to descend, followed by a woman in black lace, who winked as she passed.

"Two," Adrian said under his breath, starting up the steps.

Though he was temporarily distracted by the seductive passerby, Rance followed after him quickly.

"What did you say?"

"Nothing. Three."

Another man passed by, squeezing his hat between his hands nervously.

Rance shot Adrian a quizzical look.

"Are you…counting?"

Adrian didn't answer, but when they passed an open door he glanced in, looked momentarily ill, and said, "Six."

"You are counting! Why?"

"I let you come along, but that doesn't mean I'm going to give you a detailed account of everything I'm doing."

"Well, I hardly think that's fair. This is my first time on one of your adventures, and I would at least like to have a _hint_ about what's going on. It has to do with the Grimmoire, doesn't it? All those numbers?"

"Yes, and don't call it that."

Rance ignored him and pressed further. He had never been very curious about Adrian's unorthodox profession. The various details that his friend had shared had always been information enough, but now that he was in the middle of it Rance wanted to know everything.

"Are they magical numbers or something? Are you predicting the future? Can you—"

"They _aren't_ magic," Adrian snapped. "And I'm not a fortune teller." He was prepared to leave it at that, but Rance was staring at him, arms crossed and left eyebrow arched. It was the stare he used when Adrian owed him something, and Adrian's sense of obligation was too defined to ignore it.

He sighed and glanced up and down the dimly lit corridor. It was empty for now, and they wouldn't be able to move forward until they saw the seventh. He hoped it would be soon—the noises coming from behind the doors were making his skin crawl. Rance might be accustomed to this atmosphere, but he spent most of his days in his study, hunched over the numbers that dictated his life.

"You understand how the folk tales tend to repeat themselves over time, yes? And that some repeat themselves more often than others?"

Rance nodded.

"Well, each tale is composed of certain criteria, which can be boiled down into numerical values. The details change with the generations, but the numbers can always be used to predict, with some certainty, the general events."

"So you use the numbers to tell the future."

"_No_! It's mathematically based on past events and the probability of future ones. Hiram held the book before me, and he trained me to read and record the numbers as well."

"So you could teach me to decipher all of that gibberish."

"I doubt it. There is a certain level of talent and dedication involved."

Rance winced as if the words had stung, but smiled.

"All right, all right, point taken. I'd still like to know why we're here exactly."

"In every cycle of the tale, Snow White is somehow poisoned and has to be saved. I don't know the specifics beyond that."

"So, basically, we're charging into a brothel to save a girl that we've never seen before from some nameless poison."

"Yes."

"Your job is complicated."

"Yes."

A door opened at the end of the corridor, and a man stepped out of the shadowy interior and into the sparse light of the hall.

"Seven," Adrian said immediately, moving past the man and toward the open door. Rance followed at his heels, vaguely recalling having heard something about seven dwarves and a poisoned apple in his childhood years. Maybe things were starting to make sense—though he was fairly certain that no brothel had been involved in the original tale.

Adrian stepped into the room without knocking, but immediately stopped in his tracks. Rance walked into him and caught a glimpse of porcelain skin over his shoulder before the woman pulled on a robe.

"I'm so sorry, miss," Adrian said, flushing red from forehead to neck.

Rance rolled his eyes—the man was more of a prude than his grandmother. He moved past Adrian, taking in the room with one sweep of his dark eyes. The curtains were drawn and a single candle was lit on the night table. Silk sheets, Persian rug, mahogany boudoir—the girl was obviously a prized asset in the house. The air was thick and luscious with a scent that made his eyelids droop and his muscles relax.

"Gentlemen." The girl seated at the vanity acknowledged them without concern, guiding a brush through her glossy ebony locks. "I'll be with you in a moment."

The golden candlelight reflected off her pale skin as it would marble. Her lips were full and pouting and red as blood.

"You're Snow White," Adrian said haltingly, struggling to find his tongue in the heavy sweetness of the air.

"That's what they call me, love." She winked at him, but truly seemed more concerned with the state of her reflection. After a long while of studying her face in the gilt mirror, she turned to them and smiled.

"I usually require appointments, but I'm sure I can make an exception."

"We're not—" Adrian started, but she silenced him with a flick of her shapely wrist.

"You won't be judged here," she said, rising gracefully and taking up a wine glass.

"Red wine," Rance noted with some appreciation.

"A gift from Queenie," said Snow White. "She assures me it is of the highest quality."

"Red wine," Adrian echoed, regaining some lucidity with the sight of it. His head was spinning with the numbers in the book, and he knew that red was important somehow. Red like blood. Red like a rose. Red like an apple. Red like a _poison_ apple.

"Stop!" he cried, reaching for the glass.

But it was too late. Snow White's pale throat pulsed with a swallow, and she raised a delicate eyebrow at Adrian.

"Would you like—" She stopped mid-sentence, swallowing hard. Her hand started shaking, and she set the wine glass down quickly.

"The poison," Rance said numbly. For him, the thought hadn't solidified until that moment, as the girl in front of them clutched her chest and started gasping for air. Until that moment, they were just playing a game with storybook characters, but now Adrian's world was crashing around Rance's shoulders, and the reality of it was ice in his veins.

Adrian did not afford such pause. He lunged forward and caught Snow White beneath her arms before she slid to the floor.

"Rance, help me!" he cried, dragging her toward the bed.

Rance snapped into action and helped Adrian lift her onto the bed. Her body was limp, but she still breathed—horrid, ragged gasps that sounded as if they would rip her throat to shreds.

"What do we do?" Rance raked his brain for memories of the children's tale. Something about a glass coffin and a foreign prince. "Do you have to kiss her?"

Adrian spared a moment to cast him a disparaging glance.

"Don't be ridiculous. Poison can't be cured by a kiss—at least not anymore. Help me roll her to her side."

"Why?" Rance obeyed nervously, wondering what secret, ancient cures Adrian was privy to because of his dealings with the Grimmoire.

With one hand, Adrian held open the writhing girl's jaw, and then he jabbed his finger to the back of her throat. The effect was instantaneous and decidedly unpleasant, but ultimately successful.

They left Snow White resting peacefully on the bed, with her chest rising and falling in a soft rhythm, and Adrian reeked of vomit the whole way home.

* * *

"Your profession is less glamorous than I anticipated." Rance wasted no time in retrieving the scotch from the liquor cabinet. He had never needed a drink more in his life.

Adrian finished buttoning his fresh shirt and pulled open the top left drawer of his desk.

"What did you expect?" he asked dryly. "An epic battle with an evil witch?"

"No, just less vomit." Rance reached over the desk and pushed the drawer closed. "Scotch first."

Adrian laughed despite himself and accepted the glass.

"I'll admit that I've never rescued anyone in that particular fashion before."

"Here's to never having to do so again." Rance raised his glass, and they drank the toast together.

There was a quiet knock at the door, and it cracked open.

"Mr. Dacre? Is there anything you need before I leave?"

"Cynthia!" Rance yanked open the door and pulled her into the room. "Join us. Have a drink." He took down another glass from the cabinet.

"Save your scotch, Mr. Harper. I know how much it means to you." Cynthia took the glass from him and put it away.

"You always think the worst of me. Am I really all that bad?" Rance tried to look pitiable, but his grin shone through.

"I try not to judge," she said primly, turning to wipe a rag across the shelf so she could hide her own smile.

"Cynthia, I didn't realize you were still here." Adrian checked his pocket watch in bewilderment. It was only half past seven, though it felt much later. There was still time to get work done tonight. He took out the book and opened it on the desk, immersing himself immediately in the columns of ciphers.

Rance poured himself some more scotch and collapsed on the settee. He savored the subtle, smoky aroma of the whiskey and watched Cynthia finish dusting the bookshelf. Her black hair was fixed in two girlish braids that rested on her slim shoulders. The lilac of her high-waisted gown was pale against her olive skin, which she had inherited from her Romani mother. Despite her station, she was really quite lovely.

"Cynthia, when are you going to run away with me?" Rance asked with a wink.

"As soon as you put a ring on my finger, Mr. Harper, and I'll thank you to call me Miss Ellers until then."

"Adrian is allowed to call you Cynthia."

"Mr. Dacre has never been a rake or a scoundrel, so he can call me what he pleases."

Rance laughed and glanced at Adrian, who was wholly absorbed in his work. Adrian had long ago learned to drown out their repartee, and right now the numbers were demanding his complete attention. Having never encountered a tale similar to Snow White's before, he was uncertain of which numbers to record. He had a long night ahead of him.

"Mr. Dacre, if you don't need anything, I'm going to head home," Cynthia said, pocketing her rag.

"Sure, Cynthia. Thank you," Adrian murmured vaguely. "But if there is a seven here and a four there, then why…" And he was lost in the numbers again.

"I'll escort you home, Cynthia." Rance jumped to his feet and downed the rest of his drink.

Cynthia paused at the door and arched her eyebrows at him.

"I think you mean 'Miss Ellers,' and no, thank you."

"You scold me for being a rake, but you deny me this noble deed?" Rance put his hand against the door frame and leaned in slightly.

"The deed may be noble, but the same can't be said about your intentions, I'm afraid." Cynthia's gaze was steely, and for the first time Rance noticed that her brown eyes were dappled with green. The effect was striking.

"Fair enough," he said, dropping his gaze.

Cynthia slipped past him, leaving the door open behind her. Rance rubbed the back of his neck and slumped down on the settee again. He stared at the empty glass in his hand for a long while, deep in thought, but finally shook his head clear and stood up.

"I'm going to use the guest room tonight," he said.

"Is Miss Green still haunting your house?" Adrian smiled and spared a quick glance away from his work.

"Actually, it's Miss Harris this time."

Adrian sighed and scribbled down a few numbers.

"You know, if you keep at this, no lady will ever have you." He looked up again. "Rance?"

But Rance had left the room.


	3. Chapter 3

The forest floor was layered with autumn leaves. The air was crisp and fresh with the first hints of the coming winter. A rhythmic thumping in the distance signaled the presence of a woodsman, eking out an existence with his axe and creating a living pulse for the forest. Overhead, the late afternoon sun sent gold streams of light through the silver birches. Dust particles floated lazily through the beams, creating the appearance of some strange otherworld, hovering on the brink of time.

Clarissa was tearing down the path as fast as her small legs would carry her. Her red velvet cape—a gift from her grandmother—streamed behind her, catching on the underbrush that overtook the trail. Her basket had been flung aside at the first sight of her pursuer, with a vain hope that the hungry beast would go after the warm treats instead of her.

She knew that the wolf could catch her at any moment, and that it was merely biding its time as it loped along behind, waiting for her to collapse from exhaustion. She would be an easy meal.

But still Clarissa pressed herself forward. Her grandmother's house was so close. She would be safe there. She was so close.

Her foot caught a root, and she flew through the air. The ground came up for a violent kiss, and the impact lanced her with pain. Her palms and knees burned as she struggled to stand up. Her cape was cumbersome and seemed to be entangling her on purpose, sentencing her to her demise. She rolled onto her back, feeling the leaves crunch under her weight, releasing the crisp scent of autumn all around her.

The wolf's teeth were bared, and its snout was sodden with blood. Its amber eyes were harsh and hungry. Clarissa was paralyzed as it drew near, and her own eyes filled with tears, so that the world around her became a blur.

A gunshot jarred the air, setting birds to flight.

Clarissa gasped as the wolf dropped to the ground. She wiped her eyes fiercely and searched for the source of the shot. The golden-haired man was fifty yards off the path. His greatcoat was dusty and torn, and his face was smudged with dirt and sweat. His chest was heaving as he shouldered his rifle, as if he had been running harder than Clarissa had.

He stepped onto the path and nudged the wolf with the toe of his boot. It was dead.

"Th-thank you," Clarissa stammered, accepting the stranger's hand and scrambling to her feet.

"Come on, I'll walk you back home." His voice was a rich baritone, soft at the edges.

"No, thank you. I have to see my grandmother. She lives right down the path."

"You can't." His response was swift and sharp.

Clarissa looked up in confusion. The man's face was drawn tight with an expression she couldn't read. It might have been regret, or grief.

"She's expecting me." Clarissa stepped back, fighting the unexplained anxiety bubbling in her stomach. She involuntarily glanced down at the dead wolf. The blood matting its snout was still fresh, but surely that was from another animal. "She's expecting…"

Without finishing her sentence, Clarissa turned and sprinted down the path.

"Wait!" The man's voice was already distant in her ears, but still she ran harder.

She entered the clearing shortly and pushed through the white picket gate without slowing down, but when the front stoop of the little cottage came into sight she stopped dead in her tracks.

Arms from behind wrapped her in an embrace and spun her away, but not soon enough. She had already seen what she wasn't supposed to see, what no person ever should.

The mangled and bloody remains of a human were draped across the front stoop like some kind of death omen. Her grandmother's favorite paisley shawl, drenched in blood, was snagged in the gooseberry bush. The stench was thick and putrid, wrenching tears from Clarissa's eyes.

The man held her tightly, as if to protect her from the gruesome sight, but it was too late. The image was branded in her memory, and Clarissa knew she would never escape it. Her screams drowned out the world.

* * *

Adrian shut the door to his study behind him and leaned the rifle against the wall.

"You went hunting? Why didn't you tell me?" Rance was in his usual spot on the settee, concealed waist-up behind a newspaper.

Adrian ignored him. He shrugged off his greatcoat, letting it fall to the floor, and collapsed into his desk chair. He cradled his face in his right hand and reached for the top left drawer out of habit, but he stopped short. His hand fell limp, and a ragged sigh escaped his lips.

Rance watched him over the top of the paper.

"You didn't go hunting, did you."

Adrian laughed shortly. It sounded harsh, even to his own ears. The gory image of the girl's grandmother was pulsing behind his eyelids like a headache. The amber eyes of the wolf, tinted with bloodlust, were burned into his memory.

"I was hunting, all right."

Rance observed him carefully, trying to decide what might have affected Adrian so strongly. He had never seen him like this before.

"Did you—"

"I don't want to talk about it, Rance." Adrian pressed his palms hard against his eyes, trying to smother the hot tears that were building up. The little girl's screams were grating against his eardrums, and his heart felt sluggish in his chest, like every beat was a battle behind his sternum.

He couldn't help but think of those who had turned the age-old tale into literature, and how none of them had captured the true measure of the tragedy. Perrault's moral teaching, Barker's wit, and the Grimms' happily ever after were just varying shades of the black truth.

For a moment, his heart stood still. He was back in the wood, trapped in a timeless otherworld, and he felt desperately alone. No one understood. To Rance, it was a game at best. To the folklorists, it was tales for schoolchildren. He was the only one who saw the reality—a reality that replayed again and again with different people in different versions of the same stories.

He let loose a low moan, overwhelmed by the sheer enormity of his isolation and disillusionment.

"Are you sick?" Rance lowered his newspaper slightly.

Adrian shot him a glare, and Rance retreated behind the paper again.

"I know, I know. You don't want to talk about it," he mumbled.

Adrian swallowed against the hot lump in his throat and forced himself to pull open the drawer. The only object in the drawer was the leather-bound book, which looked deceptively innocuous. As he opened it, he couldn't help but feel an abrupt and intense loathing for the unending columns of numbers—the numbers that spelled out the course of his life, as they had for two men before him.

And suddenly it was too much. He couldn't do it anymore. He couldn't spend the rest of his life drowning in the ciphers, watching other lives pass him by, witnessing their beginnings and saving their endings and knowing that the cycle was never going to really end.

He slammed the book shut and went to the liquor cabinet.

"Scotch is on the desk," Rance said, without lowering the paper.

Adrian yanked open the cabinet doors and thrust his hand to the very back of the cabinet, past the gin and the champagne. The dusty bottle he pulled out had never been opened before. He took down a shot glass as well and went back to his desk.

"Absinthe? Really, Adrian? You never touch the stuff." Rance put aside his newspaper, feeling the first twinges of worry in his gut.

Adrian said nothing and popped the cork. The pale green liquid looked like poison in the glass, but he downed it anyway and poured himself another. He could feel the bitter fire carving a path all the way to his stomach, and the second shot was just as unpleasant. He poured a third.

Rance jumped up and grabbed the glass away.

"What are you doing?" Adrian demanded with a cough, blinking away the unexpected lightness in his head.

"You don't need another."

"I'm thirty-five years old, Rance, _and_ I saw the half-devoured corpse of a little girl's grandmother tonight. I think I know how much alcohol I need." He reached for the glass, but Rance stepped back.

"You had a bad night, and a drink to calm your nerves is completely understandable." Rance emptied the glass into the potted plant on the corner of the desk. "But I'm not going to let you get sloshed on absinthe."

Adrian laughed sharply.

"A lecture on self-control is a _fine_ thing, coming from you."

Rance frowned at his tone. Adrian wasn't one to mince words, but he was never cruel.

"You're not yourself right now, and absinthe isn't going to help." He replaced the cork and put the bottle away.

Adrian seemed to come to his senses.

"I'm sorry, Rance. I shouldn't have said that," he said quietly.

"I've heard worse." Rance shrugged and returned to his newspaper. He was just relieved that any further crisis had been averted. He had never seen his friend like that before.

Adrian sank back into his desk chair and pushed the book to the side. His head felt clearer now, and he knew that he would never be able to abandon his destiny, but he still wasn't ready to deal with tonight's numbers.

"Have you seen today's paper?" Rance asked.

Adrian shook his head tiredly.

"Snow White was interviewed."

"Mm-hmm," Adrian murmured, barely listening.

"She doesn't remember anything about her near-death experience, but she is denouncing her life of promiscuity and marrying her savior, the dashing Doctor Hart. Can you believe that? The imbecile shows up _after_ she's been saved and takes the credit for himself."

"That's the way it works out, more often than not."

"It's ridiculous. He's lying to her. How can you stand to let them go on like that? I think we should call on the newspaper editor tomorrow and—"

"No," Adrian said abruptly. "Rance, you can't tell anyone what really happened. You can't tell anyone _anything_ about what I do."

"But why?"

"I'm not trying to be the hero of these stories. I'm merely manipulating events toward the proper ending. Snow White is _supposed_ to marry the rich and handsome prince and live happily ever after." Though with a lying husband, he silently doubted that her ending could be truly happy.

Rance stared at him for a few seconds, mulling over his words.

"So you spend your whole life giving these people their happily ever after, but when do you get yours?"

The question caught Adrian off guard. After a moment of reflection, his shoulders sagged slightly, and he opened the book, forcing himself back to work. His reply was soft and distant.

"I don't think I get one."


	4. Chapter 4

Mr. Hadley had not been permitted in his own house for almost four months now. He had tried once before, a week after his wife had banished him. Mrs. Hadley had instructed the rather oversized manservant to bash Mr. Hadley over the head with his own liquor bottle and dump him in the empty field across the lane. Mr. Hadley had awoken the next morning to a splash of cold water, courtesy of a stranger in a fine blue waistcoat and polished boots.

The man's name was Adrian, and over the course of four months he had become Mr. Hadley's savior. Or at least, he _would _be his savior, if Mrs. Hadley would allow her prodigal husband to return home.

As he knocked on his own front door, Mr. Hadley was impossibly nervous. He picked restlessly at his starched collar and squinted unhappily at the glaring morning sun. His mouth was dry, and whenever that happened he would start to crave a touch of liquor.

"I can't do this. I can't." He shook his head and started to step back.

Adrian, calm beside him, put a hand between his shoulder blades and kept him in place.

"You don't understand," Mr. Hadley said. "She'll never take me back anyway. I just need—"

The door opened to reveal the overly large manservant, clutching a rifle in one hand.

"You will kindly leave, Mr. Hadley," he said, impeccably polite, as if it were normal protocol to answer the door with a gun in hand. He saw Adrian. "Oh, Mr. Adrian, you are welcome to come in. Mrs. Hadley has been expecting you. She's in the parlor."

"Mr. Hadley is my guest, Charles. If you please." Adrian was unruffled. He looked quite like a man coming for tea, and not a man trying to smuggle in an exiled husband.

Charles looked at odds with himself, but finally he nodded and stepped back to let them in. Mr. Hadley shuffled past him, eyes downcast, still recalling the giant lump that the weaponized liquor bottle had left on his head. Adrian inclined his head gratefully to Charles and followed Mr. Hadley to the parlor in the back of the house.

He was two steps behind Mr. Hadley, and Mrs. Hadley still had time to shriek and fling something glass before Adrian entered the room.

"Mrs. Hadley, please calm down," he said, stepping over the shattered vase and guiding her to a chair.

"I will _not_. He is not welcome here!" Mrs. Hadley pointed an accusing finger at her husband, her eyes afire with rage. Despite her petite stature, prim brown curls, and sweet pink gown, she was a fearful thing to behold.

Mr. Hadley stood meekly in the corner, overcome by shame and guilt in the face of his wife's anger.

"Virginia, please," he started, but had to duck another glass projectile.

"Mrs. Hadley, you must hear him out," Adrian said, prying a brass candlestick from her grasp.

"I can't believe you brought him here," she cried, lowering herself into an armchair. "I told you everything he's done."

"I've changed, Ginny!" Mr. Hadley ran forward and threw himself at her feet. The need to have her forgiveness suddenly surmounted his shame, his fear, and even the dryness in his mouth. "I swear I've changed."

Mrs. Hadley watched him warily, not even protesting when he took her hand in both of his.

"You're sober." Her voice was quiet, uncertain, as if she were afraid to speak it aloud, in case it wasn't so.

Mr. Hadley nodded vehemently, too overwhelmed for words.

"Almost a full four months now," Adrian said softly.

Mrs. Hadley looked up at him, her brown eyes shining with moisture.

"You've done this?" she asked. "You've changed him?"

"Your husband changed himself."

"I love you, Virginia. I can't go on without you." Mr. Hadley held her hand more tightly, pressing it against his chest as if to show her the wild thumping of his heart.

"No." Mrs. Hadley pulled her hand away and escaped him, moving across the room to the bookshelf. "I haven't forgotten what you've done. You gambled away our savings. You've alienated our friends. You're a beast when you are drunk." She held a trembling hand against her own heart.

"I've been working double at the mill; I can earn it all back. Our friends will forgive me if you will, Ginny. All I care about is _you_." His voice was raw and thick. He was holding back sobs.

The parlor was silent. Virginia Hadley ran her fingers along the bookshelf, taking in the knick-knacks and volumes that signified her life with her husband. Four months ago he had tipped the whole thing over in a drunken fit. She had forced him to leave because he was no longer the man she had married. He had become a villain, a liar, and a beast.

But now he was on his knees before her, and the genuine emotions in his face were a window into the past, to the man she had once loved with all her soul. What if that man had come back to her? What if the beast had been tamed?

Adrian left Mr. and Mrs. Hadley sobbing in each other's arms, full of restoration and hope and promise for the future. He waved goodbye to a surprised Charles and directed his coach driver homeward. He wanted to believe that theirs was a happily ever after, and a few months ago, he would have.

Something was different now. Something was gnawing in his chest, and he could no longer believe that Mr. Hadley's love for his wife was all that he needed to defeat his demons. That was the stuff of fairy tales, and in reality Mr. Hadley would probably go back to the bottle before the month's end. He would leave his beautiful young wife in favor of a night's drunken revelry, and the couple would never be happy again.

Adrian suddenly felt sure of it. And if he had failed the Hadleys, how many others had he failed?

* * *

The three knocks on the door were sharp and loud. Rance was in the kitchen, trying to find where Cynthia kept the leftover biscuits. Today was her day off, Adrian had been missing since before breakfast, and Rance was famished. He could have eaten a better lunch at home, but his aunt and cousins were visiting, and he couldn't stand them. Luckily, Aunt Susan and her girls didn't like him much either. So he made himself scarce during their visits, and everyone was happy.

He had just closed his fingers around the elusive biscuit when the visitor at the door knocked again. It occurred to him that he was the only one here, and the visitor didn't seem prepared to give up. He answered the door, biscuit in hand.

The woman on the stoop was stout and severe. Though she was fairly young and her ring finger bare, she wore dark colors and an old-fashioned dress that was better suited to someone twice her age. Despite the warm day, her navy spencer was buttoned all the way to her chin.

Rance watched her expectantly, guessing that she was from a convent or an orphanage, fishing for donations.

"Mr. Dacre?" Her tone was as no-nonsense as her expression, and she looked him over critically, not failing to notice the biscuit.

"Lawrence Harper. I'm Mr. Dacre's associate. Can I help you?" Rance took a rather indecorous bite of the biscuit. He had noticed the woman's disapproving stare and wanted her to know that he was unaffected by it. She reminded him of his childhood schoolteacher, who refused to call him Rance, even though everyone else did, and took special pleasure in rapping his knuckles with a ruler every time she thought he deserved it—which was often. The visitor even wore her russet hair the same way, pulled into a tight bun that did not flatter her round cheeks and snub nose.

"Your reputation precedes you, Mr. Harper." The woman's smile was tight and forced, either sarcastic or merely unpracticed—Rance couldn't decide.

Rance took her offered hand suspiciously, half-expecting her to bite him.

"I'm afraid I can't say the same for you, Miss…?"

"Carver," she supplied. "I make a point of avoiding society."

"In that case, you and Adrian will get along marvelously."

"I am not here to make friends, Mr. Harper. My purpose is strictly business."

"Is that so?" Rance raised an eyebrow, waiting for more information.

"Strictly _confidential_ business."

"What's going on, Rance?" Adrian came through the back hallway from the alley door, where he often had the coach driver drop him off.

Rance looked back at him.

"Do you know a Miss Carver?"

"No."

Rance turned back to the doorway.

"He says he doesn't know you."

"Is she _here_?" Adrian stepped forward quickly. "Let her in, Rance, for heaven's sake. How many of my visitors have you left standing out on the stoop?"

"None. You never have visitors." Rance chuckled and opened the door wide so Miss Carver could step in.

"With a doorkeeper like you, Mr. Harper, it is no wonder." Miss Carver issued her peculiar smile again and moved past him. "Mr. Dacre, I am Catherine Carver."

"It's a pleasure. Won't you please sit down?" Adrian was obviously flustered. Rance was right; he never had visitors. He had no idea what to do with this stranger standing in his front parlor.

Fortunately, Miss Carver did not care for formalities, and she had a very specific purpose in mind.

"Mr. Dacre, if you please, I would rather skip the small talk and just tell you why I've come."

"Very well," Adrian said, a little drawn back.

Miss Carver glanced once at Rance, who seemed content to munch on his biscuit and not give them any privacy. She decided to ignore him and looked back at Adrian.

"I need you to save a princess."

Rance choked on his biscuit. Adrian frowned.

"Miss Carver, I don't know what you've heard about me, but—"

"I haven't heard anything about you—at least not from the public." She seemed to lose interest in the immediate vicinity and wandered to the shelves on the far wall. "You are very good at your job."

Adrian exchanged a glance with Rance, who shrugged and tapped his temple. Adrian exhaled, wishing that his friend would be more helpful, but Rance was headed to the kitchen for another biscuit.

"I'm a gentleman; _that_ is my job," Adrian said carefully, taking a few steps toward her.

She looked over her shoulder at him, with her hand perched lightly on one of his father's musty volumes. For a split second he thought he saw a sympathetic smile on her features, but then her face was serious again.

"That's why you spend all your time avoiding society?" She turned back to the shelf. "Let's not play games, Mr. Dacre. I know who you are, and I know that you're supposed to help me."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

Miss Carver nodded to herself, as if she had expected as much. She faced him once more.

"Twenty-seven, four, thirteen, nine, one hundred, sixteen." She rattled off the numbers with ease and crossed her arms.

"How did you learn that sequence?" Adrian demanded, forgetting that he was playing dumb.

"The first words I learned to speak," she said, and then added softly: "They're my life."

"You have a _Grimmoire_ too?" Rance leaned against the doorway to the parlor, chewing on his second biscuit.

"A what?" Her voice regained its severity so abruptly that the softness from a moment earlier could have easily been a trick of the imagination.

"I told you not to call it that, Rance." Adrian squeezed the bridge of his nose to ease the ache behind his eyes. He had come home in a foul mood, only wanting to retire to his study and think, but now…_this_.

"You've given the book a nickname?" Miss Carver asked, her disgust evident on her tongue.

"Well, somebody has to call it something. How can a book of magical fortune-telling numbers _not_ have a fitting name?"

"It's not magic," Adrian and Miss Carver snapped in the same breath, and then looked at each other.

Rance glanced between them, chuckled, and took another bite of his lunch.

"Wait, how do _you _know about the book?" Adrian asked her suspiciously.

"My late matron—I suppose you could call her that—knew Mr. Hiram Brown, your predecessor, I believe?"

"I can't help you, Miss Carver," Adrian said shortly, unwilling to join her in a conversation about his beginnings in this profession.

"That is very probable. I'm beginning to doubt that anyone can." She paused a moment to straighten her spencer's collar in view of the decorative mirror that hung by the bookshelf. "But you will certainly try, Mr. Dacre."

She met his gaze in the mirror. Her brown eyes were austere, daring him to disagree with her.

Adrian accepted the challenge, but cautiously.

"And what makes you think I will?" His voice had fallen quiet with the weight of the moment, and he felt that something unnamed was hovering between them. Something crucial and perilous.

"Your life is dictated by the numbers, just as mine is dictated by this particular sequence. It has been a lifelong dance around it, but we were always meant to come together."

And somehow Adrian knew that she was right.


	5. Chapter 5

The last house on Rampion Street was large and crooked on its foundations. It was built too many years ago and had seen too many harsh winter storms. The yard was overgrown and eerie in the light of the full moon. Adrian stood across the road, in the shadow of an old oak, and watched the attic window.

He heard a rustle in the bushes behind him and whirled around. A mangy tabby cat bounded past with a low growl in its throat and melted into the shadows, reappearing occasionally in the patches of silver moonlight that dotted the tree-lined street. Adrian swallowed the nerves that bubbled in his throat and turned back toward the house. He took out his pocket watch and squinted at its face, measuring the ticking second hand against the numbers that were chiseled neatly in his mind.

It was time.

He crossed the street in three long strides and headed for the side of the weathered house. The old woman went to bed before nightfall every evening and did not rouse until the light of day. He had been watching the house for almost a month now, waiting for the numbers to align. Perhaps tonight wasn't ideal, but time was running short. The girl was almost five months along, and she had yet to realize that her proverbial prince was not coming back for her. If she remained much longer on the vindictive crone's allotted diet of dried bread crusts, then she and her unborn child would effectively starve to death.

Adrian wrapped his fingers around the rose terrace attached to the side wall and felt a brief sensation of foolishness rush through his veins. He was a gentleman, for heaven's sake. A gentleman of old money and older blood, and now he was going to scale a wall in the middle of the night and climb through the window of a helpless, oblivious girl—and to what end? She would never be convinced that her so-called lover had bought a one-way ticket on the new passenger train to parts unknown. The man was young, hot-blooded, and had no use for a penniless wife and a screaming infant.

She would never be convinced that her life was forever ruined, that she had been used and left for refuse, and that Adrian was the only person in the city who would be willing to help her. And that was his purpose, wasn't it? His sole and vain purpose.

Adrian gritted his teeth and started his ascent. He found the climb much more difficult than previously anticipated. The terrace was nothing like a ladder. His muscles burned with the effort of keeping his body pressed close to the wall, and the flimsy wooden support creaked and moaned with every foothold.

His fingers brushed the windowsill, and he concentrated one last burst of effort into pulling himself through the open window. It had been left open every night since her lover's last departure, in naïve preparation for his return.

Adrian stood cautiously and blinked rapidly against the darkness. He was tense, ready for either a scream or a welcome, depending on how long it took her to realize that he wasn't who she expected.

Nothing but silence greeted his ears.

"Rapunzel?" The name felt strange on his tongue. It was one thing that hadn't changed in this cycle of the tale, despite its rustic origins.

Silence again, and his eyes had adjusted enough to the darkness to see that the tiny attic room was empty. Adrian frowned, his head automatically running through the numbers again. What had he missed?

He turned back to the window, still at a loss and now facing the problem of getting back down.

A loud click behind him raised the hairs on the back of his neck. Slowly, he spun around, wondering how he knew from that single, harrowing sound exactly what was waiting for him, even though he had never experienced the like.

The crone's arms were shaking visibly as she clutched the antique flintlock pistol in both hands.

"You're him." Her voice was rough and low, quavering dangerously between anger and hysteria.

Despite the relative darkness, Adrian's eyes found the gun barrel easily, and he could not look away.

"I'm not." He took a tentative step backwards, feeling the windowsill with his fingertips.

The old woman pounced forward with shocking agility. All her hysteria had given way to a fierce, decisive anger, and she rammed the barrel against Adrian's chest. Her eyes shone in the moonlight, watery with indignation. Adrian's breath deserted him as her finger twitched dangerously near the trigger. But she did not pull it yet.

"She ran. The little harlot ran. I thought she went with him—with _you._" She pushed the barrel against his heart more harshly.

"I'm not him," Adrian said, licking his dry lips and barely mustering his voice. At the same time, his head reeled. He was certain that the villain in question had bought only one ticket, and he had not missed his train. Then where did Rapunzel go?

"You're a wretch!" she screeched. "You stole her innocence, and that's why she left me."

"Or maybe it was because you locked her in this attic and nearly starved her to death." The words slipped out of their own accord, and he bit his lip. The madness in the woman's eyes was obvious enough; there would be no reasoning with her.

Her sallow wrinkles tightened at his words, and a strangled, animalistic cry of fury pulsed in her throat. Adrian knew that her finger was tightening on the trigger, so he did the only thing he could. He flung himself backwards through the window.

The shot sounded after him, brash and unholy in the serene night air. All else was pain and warm crimson and a breathless sprint. The last thing he remembered clearly was the cold marble of his front hall as it rose to meet his face.

* * *

"All I'm saying is that it would have been nice if you had let me know that you were going to be participating in a gunfight with a crazy old witch." Rance poured some vodka on his friend's arm. They had cut away the bloody, mangled shirtsleeve to find, with excessive relief, that the bullet had left only a graze.

Adrian yelped at the sudden burning and pushed Rance away.

"Are you insane? Stop pretending like you know what you're doing—and I didn't _know _there was going to be a gun. There never has before." Of course, the Rapunzel of the story had never vanished before either.

Rance shrugged and took a quick swig from the bottle to ease his nerves. Coming downstairs to find Adrian collapsed on the floor in a bloody heap had not been a pleasant experience, and his composure was still rattled.

"We've got to clean it somehow," he said. "And you won't let me fetch the doctor."

"Pouring vodka on it is _not _the ideal remedy," Adrian said, swiping the bottle away before Rance could try for a second bout of cleansing.

"And not to mention a terrible waste of a fine hard liquor," said a third voice.

Adrian and Rance looked toward the front hall, where Miss Catherine Carver stood, observing the upheaval in the little-used parlor with a quizzical brow.

"Not bothering to knock anymore, are we?" Rance crossed his arms and tried to convey all of his current emotions—a vague dislike, an insurmountable need to antagonize, and a hint of rivalry—in one cool expression, just as she did.

Miss Carver did not seem to notice.

"You never knock, and I'm much more useful than you are," she said with a casual wave of her hand.

"Though, not nearly as amusing," Adrian added, out of a halfhearted sense of loyalty to Rance, who did not appear to appreciate the effort.

During the past month, Miss Carver had been around nearly as much as Rance was. Her stolid presence, loosely masked rudeness, and dim frown had become a fixture in the house, somewhat indispensable, and—in Adrian's own private opinion—not altogether unwelcome. Her outward cynicism matched his inward disillusionment, and it was comforting to feel that he was not alone—even if his companion was generally unappealing. She had lived her life within a confine of numbers as well, though her prison was one single sequence, one single story, a hundred years in the making.

"I've drawn a more detailed map of the tower," she said, reaching into her reticule and withdrawing a folded sheet of paper.

"We're a little busy at the moment. The man is bleeding to death." Rance patted Adrian's unharmed shoulder with affected concern and snatched back the vodka bottle.

Catherine's constant frown deepened slightly, and she stepped into the lamplight to better see Adrian's wound. Upon examining it—a few moments that made Adrian quite uncomfortable—she nodded sharply, as if confirming a suspicion.

"It's barely a scratch. You'll be fine." Her curt assessment was hardly a surprise to Adrian or Rance, who perhaps would have been more disquieted if she had expressed pity or insisted on nursing the wound. Catherine Carver was as she herself had advertised—strictly business. There was no allotment for pity or nurture.

"A bit more than a scratch," Adrian said, reluctant to admit it even to himself as he studied his left shoulder. The bullet could have caused much more damage, but the gash was still fairly deep, and there was a plausible risk of infection. He knew he should call on a doctor, but there was some small part of him that refused to let the injury into the open. To him, this wound represented the darker side of his secret profession. He could not let a doctor hum and haw over it, prescribe medicines, and ultimately pretend that it was something that could be healed and forgotten. That darker side he had discovered as of late was not something that could be glanced over so easily.

He had a feeling that neither Rance nor Miss Carver would understand those sentiments.

"I believe that 'gaping, bloody mess' would be a more appropriate term," Rance said.

"You'll be fine," Catherine repeated, perplexed that they were _still_ on the subject of his injury, even though she clutched a vital component of the real business at hand. She had not even bothered to ask what had caused the wound, and that was deliberate. Mr. Dacre's profession only concerned her as far as it concerned those six numbers and the princess in the tower.

"It's still bleeding awfully." Adrian frowned and flexed his muscles, gauging the pain. Searing, but not debilitating.

"Mm-hmm," Rance affirmed, allowing himself another swallow from the vodka bottle.

Catherine looked between them, suddenly struck by the sheer, combined idiocy of the both of them, and the true measure of their uselessness. If Mr. Dacre was ever going to attend to her problem, then she would first have to attend to this bothersome injury.

"_Honestly_," she vented, flinging the carefully drawn map into Adrian's lap and slipping out of her high-collared spencer, something she had never done before in their presence. "You think that _one_ of you would have thought to bandage it at least, or clean it."

She stormed into the kitchen, muttering under her breath about inept, idiotic men as she thrashed about, searching for the linen cabinet.

"I poured some vodka on it," Rance defended, rather ineffectually, and received a new string of insults from the kitchen, detailing his shortcomings with ruthless vocabulary. He glanced at Adrian, who was speechless and confused by Miss Carver's new show of fire and exasperation. She was generally severe, with a fearsome wit and a barbed tongue, but she was always tightly self-controlled—painfully prim and proper—and eternally buttoned chin-down in that old-fashioned jacket that now lay carelessly on the floor.

There was a horrid ripping sound, and Miss Carver reappeared, holding a strip of linen in one hand and a wet sponge in the other.

"Those bed sheets are expensive, you know." Adrian found his voice with difficulty and eyed the makeshift bandage in her hand.

Catherine ignored him and began dabbing at the wound with the sponge. Her touch was not gentle, but her method was effective. Adrian concentrated on not wincing and thought that perhaps they should have fetched Cynthia, despite the hour. She would probably have been a better nurse. He was surprised that Rance had not mentioned the idea. The man had been oddly attentive toward Cynthia lately, with fewer brash jests and more inquiries after her health and her family. Despite his usual immersion in the book, Adrian had noticed.

Miss Carver tied off the bandage and cleaned her hands in the kitchen. Then she returned and wordlessly pulled back on her spencer, buttoning it to the chin as usual. In the dim, sulky light of the lamp, she looked strangely different. The plumpness of her cheeks was sweetened by a few russet curls that had escaped from her usual bun. The perpetual frown etched into her brow was hidden in shadow, leaving only the luminance of her eyes, bright with determination.

"Where are you going?" Rance asked, his voice tinged with hopefulness that she was going home.

"I'm going to fetch the doctor, and you are going to escort me, Mr. Harper. The hour is too late for me to call on him alone."

"Why do you presume that I am gentleman enough to escort you?" he asked, just to be contrary.

"I've noticed that you offer to escort Miss Ellers home every evening. Perhaps your gentlemanly manners only extend to the more attractive members of my sex?"

Rance reddened from his ear tips to his nose and brushed past her to get his coat and hat from the closet.

"I don't need a doctor," Adrian insisted, standing up. He was still a bit shaky around his knees.

Catherine shot him a single, incisive glare, and he sat back down, suddenly thinking that having a doctor hum and haw over the wound wouldn't be the end of the world.

"I can at least come with you," he said feebly. "I know that you and Rance—"

"I can handle Mr. Harper perfectly well," she said. "You will stay here and rest. I have no desire to drag you through the night streets after you faint from exhaustion."

"I'm not—"

But Catherine silenced him with a wave of her hand. She allowed Rance to open the door for her, and left without another word. Rance shot Adrian a pained glance before following her reluctantly. The door clicked shut behind him, and Adrian was left alone with his thoughts and throbbing shoulder.


	6. Chapter 6

The shadows in Rosamond's bedchamber were frightful indeed. Her window faced south, and even on the brightest of summer days there was not enough sunlight to dispel the gloominess. In time, the shadows had seemed to gain their own life. It was a cold, creeping sort of life that overtook the daylight until the shadows themselves had become distinct characters that ruled the room. The armoire's shadow was hulking and stolid, a stalwart guardian of the small realm. The bed table's shadow was sulking and sinister, an unhappy lurker. The shadow of the settee was slender and snakelike, waiting for its chance to strike out. But worst of all was the bed. It was a massive, four-poster thing, covered in draperies of black velvet. Its despotic shadow swallowed the room, and the bed itself was trapped eternally in the darkness of its own drapes.

There was little light to be had in Rosamond's bedchamber, but of this she was utterly unaware. Rosamond had been sleeping for a century now, unaware of the living world beyond her tower. Her dreams were her world, a world on the edge of time, guarded by constant shadows.

But the shadows were not her only guardians.

Miss Catherine Carver had been adopted at a young age, when she was far too young to make any decisions for herself. She had been schooled in the ways of the old, dead magic, so that she might be steward of a curse. Her matron had been adopted and schooled in the same way by the creator of the curse, a lifetime earlier. It had all begun a century ago, as the story goes, with a slighted sorceress and her rage. One prick on a spinning wheel, and a princess was doomed to sleep in an impenetrable tower while everything around her faded into dim memory.

The castle was demolished shortly after the revolutions, but the tower remained, lonesome and grey against the wide winter sky. Those who tore down the castle had been unable to tear even a single stone from the tower's foundation. Vicious black thorns on unnaturally thick vines fortified its base, and there were those who swore there was a smell of magic about it—old magic. Dangerous magic.

No one believed in magic anymore, but the acres surrounding the tower remained untouched and overgrown, as if nature itself were trying to hide the dark blemish, trying to swallow it forever in forgotten history.

In a small cottage on a hill, in sight of the gloomy tower, lived Catherine. She was thirty and a half years old and quite ready to move on with her life. Being steward of a curse is a lonely business. Besides, she had no attachment to Rosamond. Acting as steward had been the duty given to her as a child, and so it was the duty she carried out. Rosamond was a hazy reflection of a time long past, and as soon as the curse—and the story—met its proper end, Catherine planned to board a train and never look back.

It seemed, though, that curses as old as this could grow unruly and unpredictable. There was no one left alive with enough interest to penetrate the tower, and so Catherine knew she would have to help things along. There were no more princes in this part of the world, and Miss Carver did not think it likely that true love would save the day. So she was left with Mr. Adrian Dacre, his useless friend, and a very slim chance at finally being free.

The century was drawing to a close, and for the past month she had spent as much time as possible at Mr. Dacre's residence, teaching him what she knew about the old curse and what she surmised about its shifting nature. More often than not, Mr. Dacre was elsewhere, performing whatever tasks his lifelong duty to the book required. It was something Catherine understood, and so she made no comments when he would stumble in at odd hours, hollow-eyed and out of sorts.

In his absence, she would bicker mindlessly with Mr. Harper and steal cursory glances at the contents of the antique book. She had lived her whole life as a prisoner to the six numbers of Rosamond's story, and she often wondered what it must be like to live chained to a book full of such sequences. Would the freedom be more or less?

Judging from the dark circles beneath Mr. Dacre's eyes and the growing despair within them, Catherine felt certain of the answer. This only strengthened her resolve to soon be free of Rosamond and her curse forever.

* * *

"It's so obvious, Adrian. I can't believe I didn't see it before. She's the evil sorceress in the story." Rance threw his greatcoat over the back of the settee and plopped down.

"She's not a sorceress." Adrian slid painstakingly out of his coat, still favoring his left arm. The incident had been a week ago now. The doctor had stitched it cleanly and assured him that the risk of infection was low, but he could not say how long the wound would take to heal completely. It would take less time if Adrian rested it, but there was little chance of that happening. Tonight he had been dealing with an odd spin of the Golden Goose tale. Rance had trailed along for lack of anything better to do.

"She _is_ the one guarding the tower." Rance stretched his arms behind his head and stifled a yawn. "Just like the sorceress."

"Stories change through the generations. I've told you that a hundred times. There was once an evil sorceress, but Miss Carver is not her."

"Wicked fairy, then."

Adrian shot him an acerbic look, but Rance was not dissuaded.

"Come on, you have to admit that she fits the role perfectly."

"How do you mean?"

"Well, she's not exactly a nice person, is she."

Adrian couldn't help but chuckle at the vast understatement.

"That may be true, but…" He trailed off. Rance was looking at the open doorway.

Miss Carver stood there, buttoned up in her spencer and looking as tight-lipped and stern as always. Adrian stood up abruptly, almost overturning his chair. He could feel the color rising in his cheeks.

"Miss Carver, I—"

"We have to discuss the thorns around the tower. I think they might be poisonous." She looked between them, eyes severe, daring either of them to apologize.

"Poisonous how?" Adrian sat down slowly. If she wanted to pretend that she hadn't overheard, then he was happy to oblige—relieved, even.

"The deadly sort of poisonous."

"That puts a damper on things, eh?" Rance clasped his hands behind his head and stretched out his legs. There was a hint of smugness around his mouth, but that was typical whenever Miss Carver was around.

Catherine ignored him.

"You have a sword, I assume?" she asked Adrian.

"My father had one. I suppose it's around here somewhere." He felt slightly bewildered. Poisonous thorns and cursed towers were not his normal ventures. He had never held a sword in his life.

"I suggest you find it before next week."

"It's only a gentleman's sword—more for show than anything. I hardly think it is up to the task of defeating magic."

"It does not matter what sort of sword it is. All that really matters is that the bearer's heart is courageous and his intentions true."

Rance snorted.

"Sounds like tripe from a children's fable."

"He has a point," Adrian said, braving Miss Carver's scowl. "Things like courage and nobility don't hold fast in this generation." Even as he spoke, he cringed inwardly at the cynicism in his words. Six months ago he would have been disgusted with himself, but now cynicism was his one and only mood.

"Tripe it may be, but it will hold fast in this case." Catherine's words were cold, careful, and measured. "This curse is a century old, and I may not understand its evolution, but I know what it is waiting for."

"A shining prince on a white horse?" Rance suggested, rather unhelpfully.

For a moment, Catherine looked prepared to respond with a biting remark, but she pursed her lips and seemed to consider something.

"Mr. Harper, would you please excuse us?"

Rance opened his mouth to decline, but Adrian was nodding at him. He sighed and stood up to leave, pausing at the door to mimic waving a wand behind Miss Carver's back, no doubt still pushing his suspicions of her being an evil sorceress. Adrian just closed his eyes and wearily rubbed his temples.

"Mr. Dacre," Catherine began as the door swing closed. "I need to know if you are up to this task."

A part of Adrian's pride bristled, but a part of him was wondering the same thing.

"I've already told you, Miss Carver—I'm a gentleman, not a warrior prince," he said, choosing his words cautiously.

"We both know that is not what I mean," she replied tersely.

"Then, pray tell, what _do_ you mean?" He was just as curt, for he was growing tired of her constant petulance. She stood before his desk, tightly buttoned in that stuffy spencer, looking far too old for her actual age, and acting as if she were some sort of client. But he didn't answer to her, or to anyone. Well, excepting the book. His hand sought it out on the desktop, almost unconsciously, and rested there. It was at once his comfort and his tormentor. His livelihood and his damnation.

Miss Carver's gaze alighted on his hand for the briefest of moments. Adrian did not recognize what flashed through her eyes, but he moved his hand all the same.

"I mean, are you willing to see this through to the very end?" Her voice was perceptively softer, and her eyes fluttered from the book to the last button of her jacket, which she unbuttoned and buttoned repeatedly.

It took Adrian a moment to realize that she was nervous, which was the first real break in her stony exterior he had seen in the two months of their acquaintance.

"I've never given up before," he said, suddenly feeling the earnest desire to soothe her worries. Perhaps it was the sight of her sudden vulnerability that touched his heart, though Rance would say that he could never resist saving a damsel in distress. That was probably true, and probably the only reason he had not given up his unusual profession in all these years. Heaven knows he no longer believed in the cause—if he had even known what the cause was to begin with.

"Beg pardon, Mr. Dacre, but matchmaking for goose girls and chimney sweeps is hardly proper training for this sort of endeavor." Her hard shell was back, and as harsh as ever.

Adrian bit back the ocean of retorts that swelled in his throat as images of vomiting prostitutes and mangled, bloody grandmothers pulsed in his brain.

"I wish you would call me Adrian," he said finally, blinking away the unpleasant memories and accompanying emotions.

Miss Carver stared at him for a long while and eased herself onto the settee. Adrian knew that making herself comfortable was her way of agreeing.

"I only want to know that I'm not wasting my time," she admitted. "There is only a week left until the curse's predicted end, and I don't know what will happen if she is not awakened."

"Don't you think—" Adrian stopped himself.

"What?"

"Don't you think that she might be better off…" He found that he could not finish verbalizing the awful thought.

"Better off if I left her sleeping?"

"A century is a long time. Everyone and everything she knew is dead."

Catherine shook her head slowly.

"No, I can't leave her."

"You've grown to care for her?" Adrian struggled to suppress his shock.

"Of course not. I've only laid eyes on her once, when I was very young. I have no loyalty to Rosamond." She stood up abruptly and began to pace the room. "Six years ago I packed up all my belongings and hired a carriage. We made it two miles before three wheels splintered, and the horses broke free and bolted. I tried to go on foot, but it started to storm. I almost died of pneumonia, and I never tried to leave again. I know the curse won't let me." Her head drooped and her shoulders sagged, as if the mere memory of it was draining her strength.

Adrian considered suggesting that it was coincidence, but he knew that was drivel. There was no such thing as a coincidence for people like them—and they were quite the same, he and Miss Carver. Both were prisoners to a cause that they did not understand.

Miss Carver unbuttoned the collar of her spencer, paused, and then buttoned it back. Her mind seemed to be elsewhere.

"I know you must wonder what sort of person I am, to be willing to leave her to rot in that accursed tower." Her voice was quiet and trembling at the edges. "Not a nice one, that's for certain."

Adrian paled.

"Miss Carver—"

"I just want to live my life. _My_ life. Nothing more, nothing less." She looked at him, her eyes fiery with an emotion Adrian recognized.

"I understand," he said. And he did. He really did. "You're not wasting your time."

She was silent for several moments, policing her breaths and the surge of emotions in her chest.

"Thank you, Adrian." She stood up. "It's late. I will leave you to your work."

Adrian glanced down at the book, battling the revulsion he had felt for it as of late.

"You are much better company, I assure you," he said, debating within himself. He rose to his feet. "It's very late, Miss Carver. Allow me to escort you home." Anything to avoid those numbers. He wasn't sure if he could stomach them tonight.

Miss Carver seemed uncertain, but she nodded. Adrian practically threw the book into its drawer and snatched up his greatcoat.

"You can call me Catherine," she said, quite unexpectedly, as Adrian opened the study door. She looked up at him guardedly, her brown eyes strangely soft in the warm lamplight.

He regarded her with mild surprise and smiled slightly. Though Catherine did not smile in return, her round face had relaxed, and her expression was amiable. It remained so the whole way to her home, as they talked of weather and art and politics—normal things. Numbers, curses, and sleeping beauties were not mentioned even once. It was a pleasant, if brief, respite.


	7. Chapter 7

The old clock in Cynthia's tiny bedroom had been a source of comfort for her since her childhood. Its rhythmic _tick tock tick tock_ was as reliable as the sunrise, and Cynthia had always been grateful for its constancy in the darkest nights.

This evening it lay shattered on the floor.

The wood case was splintered irreparably, the glass face was reduced to glittering shards, and the inner workings were a mechanical soup on the floor. Cynthia stared at it disbelievingly for a long moment, and looked up to receive another blow from her father.

She flew backwards into the corner and let her knees crumple beneath her. Her face was ablaze with pain and tears and fear and hatred. She pulled herself into a ball, ignoring the agony in her bones. If she huddled there in surrender he would leave. And he did, but not before loosing a barrage of insults, calling her every ugly and shameful name that had ever been conceived. She felt his hot spittle on the back of her neck and thought she would vomit from the sick loathing and terror in her stomach.

He kicked the ruined clock on his way out, sending the pieces in a haphazard scurry across the floor. Cynthia remained still for an unbearable length of time, trembling in her tears and thanking God that her little sisters were next door, learning how to embroider under the tutelage of Mrs. Godwin.

The rickety front door slammed shut, signaling her father's departure for the gin joint or the whorehouse, whichever his avarice preferred tonight. Cynthia allowed herself to stretch into a more comfortable position, but she was too weak to attempt to crawl to the bed.

For a long while, all she did was weep. She wept for her beautiful and kind mother, dead since Cynthia was six years old. She wept for her stepmother, an irascible but generous woman who had at least given Cynthia two sisters, before she too passed away. She wept for Marie and Charlotte, who had known nothing but a life of constant fear and caution, and the few precious times of bliss that Cynthia had struggled to provide for them, such as embroidery lessons with Mrs. Godwin. Their father had never hurt them before, at least not physically, but he would.

He would.

With a moan, Cynthia pulled herself upright, hating herself for not having the strength to do this before. She had been simultaneously too prideful and too ashamed, but the shattered clock on her floor was like a desperate final warning from heaven. This was not her home. She could not stay here. For the sake of Marie and Charlotte, she could not stay.

She pulled her short wool cloak over her darkly bruised arms and neck and bent down painstakingly to pull on her shoes. Her hair was a mess, but there was no time to comb it or pull it back. She did not know what the rush was, for her father would be gone until the late hours, if he even returned tonight. But something in Cynthia pushed her forward, making her hands shake with urgency and her head spin with a new determination.

She walked next door with short, aching steps and asked Mrs. Godwin to please watch the girls for a couple of hours longer. The bent, wrinkled woman knew something was wrong, but Cynthia did not give her leave to ask. Mrs. Godwin did not even have enough food or space to accommodate her own family. There was nothing she could do. Cynthia thanked her and left, after declining to speak to her sisters. She could not face them now, not yet.

The walk through town was torturous for Cynthia, both physically and emotionally. She normally reveled in the liveliness of the shops and citizens, but today, in the dusk light, Cynthia felt dirty and embarrassed. She thought that everyone could see the livid bruises beneath her cloak, and that everyone was staring at her, judging her, hating her for the worthless coward that she was. She should have done this long before.

There were seven steps leading up to Mr. Dacre's front door, and Cynthia felt each of them like a dagger in her spine. Just this morning she had walked right through the front door, as she always did, scolded Mr. Harper for leaving dirt tracks in the carpet, and spent a good half-hour scrubbing a stubborn mildew stain from a corner in the kitchen. She had never had to knock at Mr. Dacre's house, not since the morning she had come looking for work several years ago, when he had hired her on the spot. But this evening things felt different.

She knocked timidly, every part of her wanting to flee. This was madness. She could not ask anything of him; he had no reason to help her. She should be able to care for her own family. She should be able to—

The door swung open.

Cynthia blinked when she saw Mr. Harper in the door. She was surprised, though she shouldn't have been. He was here more often than not.

"Cynthia?" His eyebrows were arched in clear bemusement. "Did you forget something? Why are you knocking?"

Cynthia's knees were suddenly weak, as if the hot shame on the back of her neck was drying up all of her strength. Though she hated herself even more for it, she began to cry.

"I'm sorry," Rance said immediately, thinking he was the cause. "Miss Ellers, Miss Ellers. Calling you 'Cynthia' is just a habit. I didn't realize it bothered you so much." He was rambling now, completely at a loss for how to handle the weeping woman on the front stoop.

"Is Mr. Dacre here?" she managed through her tears. She had to do this. It was too late to turn back now. Marie and Charlotte needed her.

"He's off on one of his adventures—no doubt getting shot or eaten alive or cursed into a frog. I don't know when he'll return."

Cynthia's shoulders began to shake, and her sobs grew wilder.

"I'm sorry. Come inside." Rance reached out to take her arm, but Cynthia shrank away. He backed up in bewilderment and opened the door wide.

Cynthia ducked past him, not trusting herself to speak again. She stepped into the parlor and pulled her cloak more tightly around herself. Mr. Harper stood in the doorway between the hall and the parlor, eyeing her nervously, obviously bursting with questions and concerns. To his credit, he said nothing but, "Please, have a seat."

Shaking, Cynthia obliged. She kept her head bowed low, wishing he wasn't here, wishing he hadn't seen her like this. She could handle Mr. Dacre. He was pleasant and polite and distant, always lost in that odd book of his. But Mr. Harper was fulsome and confident and, to her chagrin, increasingly irresistible.

"Are you…all right?" His voice was uncertain, as if he feared she would lash out at a word.

She sniffled and drew in a long, ragged breath. It took all her willpower, but she swallowed her shame and straightened up.

"I'm quite well, Mr. Harper, and yourself?"

Rance just stared at her openly. She looked terrible. Her cheeks were blotchy and tear-stained, and he was fairly certain that her left eye was blackening. But there was a fire in her eyes and a determination in the line of her mouth, and he had never before thought her so beautiful.

"To be honest, I'm a little confused, Miss Ellers."

She seemed to drop her attempt at inflated dignity at that. Her shoulders sagged slightly, and she looked down at her hands, which were folded in her lap to keep them from trembling.

"I am sorry to intrude like this. I simply have a favor to ask of Mr. Dacre." Her voice wavered dangerously, but she kept the tears from erupting again. Her throat burned with the effort.

Rance watched her carefully and got the feeling that whatever she had to ask was anything but simple.

"You know Adrian. He'll do anything he can to help, Miss Ellers."

She stood up suddenly, crossing the room to the bookcases in two long strides and turning her back on him. Her shoulders were shaking again.

"Oh, just call me Cynthia, for heaven's sake!" she cried, tears evident in her voice. It was ridiculous to continue in this charade of formality, when she secretly reveled every time he took the liberty of addressing her so casually. When a small part of her, or perhaps it was a very large part, wished that he was serious when he would jest about running away together, about moonlit rendezvous and romantic intrigue and all the things that could never really exist between them, for he was a rake and a flirt, and upper class besides. She was a housemaid with scarcely a pound to her name and the determination to never be hurt by another man. Nothing deeper than witty banter could ever exist between her and Lawrence Harper.

But surely there was no harm in letting him call her by her first name.

Rance was taken aback by her sudden declaration and more confused than ever. He stared at her tremulous form in silence for almost a minute.

"Sorry," he finally offered feebly, feeling that he had said little else since she'd arrived. "Cynthia."

Cynthia breathed deeply, but did not turn around. She knew her eyes were puffy and red, and there was mucus streaming from her nose. She tried to surreptitiously wipe it away with the hem of her cloak.

"Here, take this."

She jumped at his voice, which was suddenly quite near. He was at her elbow, offering a handkerchief.

"Sorry," he said, for what felt like the hundredth time. "I didn't mean to startle you."

Cynthia managed an enervated smile and took it from him, turning away to blow her nose.

"Are you sure you're all right? I can get you a cool cloth for your…" He trailed off, biting his lip.

"For what?" Cynthia moved to see herself in the small decorative mirror that hung beside the bookcase. The flesh around her left eye was swollen and dark. She felt the strong urge to cry welling within her again.

"It doesn't look very bad," Rance assured weakly. "Please don't cry again." He had seen women cry before, but usually they were confessing their undying love for him or some such tripe. This was different.

Something between a sob and a laugh bubbled in Cynthia's throat, and she sat down heavily in an armchair.

"You really are quite useless," she told him with a teary smile, and wondered why she didn't disdain him for it.

"Sorry, Cynthia." There was a small wrinkle in his brow—a cross between a puzzled frown and a hesitant smile.

Cynthia felt heat rise in her cheeks, and she looked down at her hands again, reveling guiltily in the sound of her name on his tongue.

* * *

"Adrian, you have five spare bedrooms. I think you can afford to—"

"That's not the issue here. I want to help her; I really do. But an unmarried girl and her two sisters cannot stay here overnight. Her reputation would be ruined if it got out—and you know it will."

"So give her a few pounds for an inn."

"I don't even want to think about the gossip that would come out of that."

"Fine. If you won't keep her here, then she'll stay at my house, and I'll stay here."

"Oh, your house—that will be _loads_ better for her reputation."

"Adrian!"

"Rance!"

They both paused, realizing the increase in their volume, and glanced toward the parlor, where Cynthia was staring at the bookcase and trying to be discreet. Rance took a short breath and looked back at his friend.

"Would you stop worrying about reputation for half a second?"

"I'm only thinking about _her_ reputation. I know you haven't had to think of yours for a while now, but the gossip would ruin her."

Rance exhaled and ran both hands through his dark hair, exasperated because he knew Adrian was right.

"So what, then? Should we just send her back to that father of hers? And what about her sisters? They're children, for heaven's sake."

Adrian cocked his head slightly, struck by the change in his friend. As a rule, Rance did not worry about anything or anyone—at least not in a serious way. His recent attentiveness to Cynthia was starting to gain a bit of context.

"You really care about her, don't you?"

Rance colored slightly—a rare occurrence—and looked away.

"I'm not allowed a smidge of common decency? You've got it in spades—some was bound to rub off."

Adrian was a little bothered that he had deflected the question, but it was a relief to hear him regain his usual ironic tone.

"Well, maybe you should spread some of your newfound goodwill to whichever lovesick woman is haunting your house this evening. Who is it this week? Miss Greene again? Miss Harris?"

"No one. Not for a while now." Rance's voice was strangely soft, and he did not meet Adrian's eyes.

Adrian was silent in shock. Luckily, the need for a reply was covered by the creaking of the front door. Catherine came in, muttering curses under her breath toward the passing housewife who had started preaching at her about the dangers of her "loose ways."

"Can one colleague not visit another?" she called out the door. "What does the time of day matter? _Honestly_."

To this, the housewife let loose a hellfire sermon about the evils of the night. Catherine slammed the door shut in reply.

"People are ridiculous," she said flatly, and then halted when she caught sight of Adrian and Rance's faces. She also glimpsed Cynthia, black-eyed and still tear-stained, in the parlor. It didn't take her woman's intuition to tell her that she had interrupted something heavy.

"Beg pardon," she said slowly. "I'll come back another time."

"Nonsense," Rance said, without a detectable trace of sarcasm, which—when Miss Carver was involved—was unprecedented. "Make yourself at home. You've met Cynthia, yes?" He took the speechless Catherine's elbow and led her into the parlor.

"We've met," Catherine said warily, nodding vaguely to Cynthia in greeting. Mostly she was concerned with Rance, and whether his sudden courtesy was born of some devious scheme.

"People _are_ ridiculous, aren't they?" Rance nodded with a mixture of sympathy and repressed eagerness.

Adrian stepped forward abruptly.

"Rance, what are you doing?" he demanded.

"Striking up a friendly conversation with Miss Carver." Rance tried to appear innocent, but that had never been in his capacity.

"I don't appreciate games, Mr. Harper," Catherine said suspiciously.

"Rance, you have no right to ask it of her," Adrian protested, seeing his friend's intentions immediately.

"What?" Catherine looked between Adrian and Rance, her wariness growing.

"Oh, _don't_," Cynthia cried, catching on. "She hardly even knows me."

"I would very much like to know what is going on," Catherine said, admirably calm despite her heightened suspicion.

"Cynthia and her two sisters need a place to stay for a few nights," Rance said. "Surely you could accommodate them?"

Cynthia dropped her face into her hands, thoroughly embarrassed. Adrian shook his head in vexation.

Catherine frowned.

"I should think not. I'm not a charity sister, and I'm certainly not running a poorhouse."

Cynthia pressed her face more deeply into her hands, and the tips of her ears burned red.

"I shouldn't have come," she murmured. "I'm leaving."

"Don't." Rance put his hand on her arm and shot an irritated glare at Catherine, who stared back unabashedly, quite unmoved by his disappointment.

"Please don't worry, Cynthia," Adrian said. "We'll figure something out." He squeezed the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, fighting a stress headache and wracking his brain for a reasonable solution.

"This is the very reason poorhouses were constructed," Catherine said confidently. In her mind, the problem was already solved, and it was time to move on to the business she had brought.

"We're not sending Cynthia and her little sisters to a poorhouse," Adrian snapped, losing his temper for a fraction of a second.

Catherine's eyes narrowed slightly. She watched him for a moment, but he ignored her gaze. She glanced between Rance and Cynthia, but they were also evading her eyes.

"Well, if it means _that_ much to you all, then they will stay at my house," she said, throwing up her hands in exasperation. In truth, she didn't care whether they stayed with her or not. She just wanted to attend to the business of the tower and the curse. Her mind did not allow room for other concerns.

"I couldn't ask it of you," Cynthia said timorously.

"Luckily for you, Mr. Harper can," Catherine responded briskly. "By the by, you look terrible. Am I to assume that your sisters are in a similar state? I don't intend to play nursemaid all night."

"We can take care of ourselves," Cynthia said, salvaging a bit of boldness. "I have a little less than a pound saved. I'll repay your kindness, I promise."

Catherine waved her hand dismissively.

"You'll need that to find your feet again. I'm quite serious about not being a charity sister."

"That's obvious enough," Rance muttered.

"Can we _please_ get back to the business at hand?" Catherine spared Rance a scathing look and turned to Adrian, who had been observing her in silence. "There are three days left before the century's close."

Adrian nodded, still regarding her thoughtfully.

"To the study, then?" He swept his arm toward the staircase.

Catherine pushed a loose strand of hair behind her ear and moved past him, holding herself with a strict kind of dignity that Adrian had learned to appreciate as evidence of her self-respect, not self-importance.

"Thank you," he told her, when they had ascended the stairs and were out of earshot of Cynthia and Rance.

"I'm just trying to move things along," she said. "When our business is concluded—providing all goes well—I will be on an outbound train, and Cynthia will have to find new accommodations."

"I don't think you're as stern as you'd like everyone to believe."

"I don't know what gave you the impression that I'm trying to make anyone believe anything," she replied stoutly, perching on the edge of the settee. "Now, if we could just—"

"Do you ever wonder what it might be like to lead a different life?" Adrian asked unexpectedly. "A normal life?" He sat down behind his desk and nudged the book aside with a pen, as if it were poisonous.

"I don't think that life can be measured in terms of normal and abnormal."

Adrian gave her a dry look, letting her know exactly how he felt about her pragmatism. Catherine sighed and considered his question again, recognizing that he would not settle down to business until she had.

"No, I don't. I can't even imagine what a _normal _life would be like," she said, even though her every sleeping moment was consumed with dreams of her life after she was finally free of Rosamond's curse.

Adrian stared at the book, all at once hating its hold over him and fearing that he no longer had the ability to live without it. Hate and fear—those were the two emotions that dominated his existence.

"Me neither," he said softly, even though he stood every night in front of the roaring fireplace, book in hand, wishing that he had the strength to feed it to the flames, and knowing that he never would.


	8. Chapter 8

The thorns around Rosamond's tower were the size of daggers and sharper still. Adrian's boots squelched in a green-grey mud, though the last rainfall had been weeks ago. Overhead, the sky was abnormally pale, as if its vivacity was being siphoned into the tower's sinister existence. For a moment, Adrian was in the otherworld of the forest again, hovering on the edge of time. He began to doubt that time even existed here, in this sphere of deathlike sleep.

Then a thorn caught his shirtsleeve, and the resounding _riiipp_ tore him from his trance. It had not grazed his skin, but the darkly glistening thorns reminded him of Catherine's suspicion of poison. He had to be careful.

The gentleman's saber in his hand felt unwieldy and ridiculous. This whole scenario was ridiculous. It suddenly occurred to him that he could fight his way through these monstrous thorns, wind his way to the top of the tower, and open the door to an empty room.

But even as the thought crept into his head, he craned his neck and squinted at the tower, stretching toward infinity before him, and knew that it could not be so. There was a smell of old magic about this place. He was sure of it. An uneasy breath of cobwebs and musty memories, tinged with peril and laughter long forgotten. There was a _feel_ in the air as well. Catherine had tried to describe it a few days prior, but all she could say was "Warm, but cold too…cold in your bones."

Adrian understood now. It was a tantalizing warmth that seeped in through his fingertips, rose to his scalp and descended to his toes. He felt like summer and sunlight and golden eternity. But there was a coldness too. It seeped from his marrow and wrapped his bones in winter and ice and tears long shed. The dichotomy within him was exhilarating and paralyzing, and all at once Adrian could stand it no longer.

Without thinking, he raised the saber over his head and began hacking at the thorny vines that obscured the door. They seemed to release a kind of energy, like a dying breath. Adrian gave pause for a moment, but then continued his attack.

He was half-soaked with sweat by the time the door was freed. His breaths came laboriously, and his muscles ached peculiarly—for the hot-cold of the magic still rushed through his veins. He pushed experimentally on the door, but it did not budge. Catherine had said it was probably barred from the inside. He did not know how that had been managed, but then, with the old magic weighing languidly on his brain, he did not feel that he knew much at all.

He took a run at the door, aiming his unwounded shoulder at its center. The impact lanced through his body like swords, and something behind the door splintered, but the door did not give way. He steeled himself and tried a second time, then a third. On the fourth try the door broke open, and a hundred years of dust and decay swallowed him in a maelstrom.

Adrian lost his grip on the saber and realized vaguely that his knees had hit the stone floor. The air was choked of oxygen, and with one small breath his lungs were coated in dust. He coughed uselessly, clutching at his throat.

His world turned upside down, quite literally. The floor beneath him twisted toward the ceiling and the ceiling plummeted to the floor. Adrian was caught adrift in the middle. The dust was gone, but so was the steady rhythm of his lungs. And his heartbeat.

"_A hundred years of dreams and nightmares kept locked in a tower," Catherine said, shaking her head. "I do not know what the result will be, but it won't be pleasant." _

His vision swam mercilessly, and a cacophony of sounds accosted his hearing. Bells and screams and laughter and crashes and raindrops and—and a thousand more, but he could not discern them. Colors exploded before him, crossing the boundaries of sight into his other senses. He could taste yellow and smell blue and hear green. The hot-cold was gone, replaced by a blanket of varying emotions. In a moment, Adrian felt the darkest loathing, the sweetest joy, the deepest fear, and the fiercest passion.

It was heaven and it was hell, and it lasted but a few moments. Then Adrian peeled himself off the stone floor and looked around the reality of the tower's interior for the first time. It was composed of stone and rotting wood. The stale air had a definite flavor of rat feces mingled with dust. The silence was that of a tomb, and Adrian couldn't help but shiver in the chill of it.

His hands were trembling as he retrieved the folded paper from his pocket. Catherine's lines were thin and precise, and he took a few uneasy steps forward. She had insisted ten times over that there was a door to the left which led to the stairs. Adrian ran his hand over the mildewed stone, but it was certainly solid. And if the map was incorrect from the very start, then how was he to proceed?

His cynical side had suspected that the map would be incorrect. Catherine was drawing it from memory of her visit to the top when she was quite young, from snatches of conversation she'd had with her predecessor, and from the few writings that the sorceress had left behind.

All useless.

He surveyed the chamber and spotted a door, half-rotted, on the opposite wall. The hinges had long disintegrated, and with one push the whole door collapsed in a pile of splinters and dirt. Adrian supposed that the curse only kept the exterior of the castle in fortified repair, for the century had not been kind to the interior.

Beyond the rubble of the door was a small enclave. Crooked stone steps ascended upward and along the curvature of the tower wall. Adrian peered upwards for a long while, trying to ignore the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. He glanced once more at the map Catherine had drawn, then shoved it back into his pocket and began to climb.

* * *

The tiny round table in Catherine's humble cottage was crowded for the first time in its existence. Catherine sat with the window at her back, so that the blazing afternoon light illuminated the papers she had spread before her. Cynthia sat across from her, eyeing the upside-down pages with vague interest, but they held no special fascination for her, especially since she could only read an occasional number or letter.

Charlotte sat in her lap, though, at ten, she was a couple years too big. For a while she had amused herself by poking through the papers, but an irate Catherine had slapped her hand away. So now she just dozed in her older sister's lap, with her head pressed firmly under the curve of Cynthia's chin.

Rance sat in the last chair, taking a genuine interest in Catherine's analysis of the papers. Though he could make neither head nor tails of the scribbled writing and that same sequence of six numbers, repeated over and over, he knew that Adrian's fate was somehow contained in them. He hated the thought of it, but he had to trust that Catherine knew what was going on.

A few minutes ago, much to his chagrin, five-year-old Marie had climbed drowsily into his lap and fallen fast asleep. Apparently, since Cynthia's lap was full and Catherine was downright intimidating, he was the only logical choice. The first moments were terrifying, but he had now grown quite comfortable with the warm, steadily breathing lump of pale curly hair, peachy skin, and rumpled cotton in his lap.

Cynthia kept glancing surreptitiously at the two of them. He tried to smile at her once, but she looked away quickly. He wished he knew what she was thinking.

"Oh no," Catherine mumbled.

"What?" Rance jerked to attention, very nearly waking Marie.

"I think I misread something before, but I'm not sure."

"What do you mean, you're not _sure_?" Rance wanted to stand up dramatically, but he remembered the child in his lap in the nick of time. He took a deep, calming breath. "What are you not sure about?"

"It doesn't affect Adrian," she said, her eyes still flitting wildly across the papers. "At least I don't _think_ it does. I did tell him the door was on the left instead of the right, but I'm sure he figured that out soon enough. I'm beginning to think I overestimated the curse's hold on the interior of the tower. In fact, after rereading this journal entry of Agatha's, I'm sure I did."

"So what's wrong?"

She opened her mouth to say something, but closed it quickly. Her eyes were still glued to the pages.

"Nothing," she said finally. "It's nothing; I'm certain of it." She didn't sound certain, but she didn't say anything more, and Rance didn't press.

"Mr. Dacre is going to be all right, isn't he?" Cynthia voiced suddenly, as if it had just occurred to her that he was doing something potentially dangerous.

"Of course he is," Rance said quickly.

"Probably." Cynthia began gathering her papers. She looked up to see Cynthia watching her worriedly and Rance glaring outright. "What?"

"_Probably_?" Rance echoed. "He'll _probably _be all right?"

"I'm only trying to be realistic."

"Well, stop," said Rance. "You're frightening the children."

"They're both sound asleep," Catherine replied dryly.

Rance started to retort, but Cynthia interrupted.

"Perhaps we could all stand some tea."

"Or something stronger," Rance said hopefully. His nerves could certainly stand _that_.

"It's two in the afternoon," Cynthia replied, sliding gracefully from beneath Charlotte and leaving the girl snoozing in the chair. "Tea will do just fine."

"I'll help you." Catherine followed her in the kitchen, not due to any feelings of duty or amicability, but because she didn't want to keep seeing those words on the ripped page of her predecessor's journal—words she had not seen, or perhaps just not understood, until this day.

"I'm assuming you're aware of Mr. Harper's rather lurid reputation?" she said abruptly to Cynthia, once they were out of earshot of the others.

Cynthia's shoulders hunched slightly in response, and she went hurriedly to the cabinet to retrieve the teapot.

"I'm aware that, in the past, he has shown a certain lacking of moral fiber," she said in a low voice. "But why would you bring up such a thing?" She glanced very briefly over her shoulder, first looking at Catherine and then the doorway, as if she feared Rance would be standing there.

Catherine couldn't help but notice the scarlet flush of her cheeks.

"I just wanted to make sure you knew what sort of swain you've found for yourself." She busied herself with heating the water, not looking at Cynthia, who was staring quite openly now.

"Swain? I don't even—why would—that's foolish!" Her lips would barely form words, and she was flushed red from ear to ear.

"Don't play daft. You're a reasonably intelligent girl, and any half-wit could see that he's mad about you."

Cynthia was speechless, and Catherine, misinterpreting her silence, continued.

"I would be scandalized as well. He is not a man that I could ever envision as a proper sort of husband."

"He's a perfectly lovely man!" The words burst from Cynthia before she could stop herself. She thrust her hand over her mouth.

Catherine's expression was nothing short of scathing.

"He's an unrepentant rake, and not even a private one."

"That may be so, but…but…" Cynthia's face was all hot with frustration—both at Catherine and at her own feelings. She could barely manage to stammer out any of the words that were tumbling in her head. "There is good in him."

Catherine seemed to recognize something at that point, and she smiled. It was a tight smile, certainly not comforting.

"And you hope to draw it out of him?" She paused, giving it fair consideration. "He _did_ manage to summon up enough empathy to settle you and your sisters. That is something, I suppose."

Cynthia, shaking, set to work arranging the teaware on the tray. She couldn't bear to think of it a second longer. The flicker of hope it fanned was sure to end only in pain.

"There, there," Catherine said tartly. "I wasn't trying to be callous, you understand—just realistic."

Cynthia nodded slowly. She did understand Catherine, in a strange sort of way. Realism was her way of being protective. No false hope meant no heartbreak in the future. But even she had admitted that there was hope—not in so many words, but _still_…

_No_, Cynthia thought fiercely. _I won't even think of it. _

"And what kind of man would you consider a 'proper sort of husband'?" Cynthia asked, just to occupy her mind.

Catherine was caught off guard by the question, and she stared in contemplation at the heating water for almost a minute.

"A man who respects me, I suppose," she said finally.

"Like Mr. Dacre does?"

Cynthia hadn't meant anything by it—it had just popped out of its own accord—but Catherine seemed struck almost physically. Her face drained of color, and she turned away immediately, but not before Cynthia caught a glimpse of a tremor in her jaw.

"In a way, yes," Catherine said tightly, determined not to make anything of the question, or her reaction. "But he and I could hardly—that is, the very notion is ridiculous."

"I don't see why," Cynthia said stoutly. "Mr. Dacre is a gentleman, and you're a gentlewoman. You both have peculiar professions—"

"I told you, it's ridiculous," Catherine bit off sharply, and they both fell silent.

"Do you hope to marry?" Cynthia asked at length, unable to bear the quiet. "I mean, after…after all of this?"

Catherine shrugged.

"First I need to get away from here. I try not to think past that." That was a slight lie, but she did not want to expose her innermost feelings, even to someone as genuine as Cynthia.

"Why not?" Cynthia asked.

"Because some days I don't even feel as if _that_ will ever happen." Catherine sighed, unable to stop herself from speaking candidly. "And some days I feel as if the world is my oyster, so to speak."

"So what sort of day is today?"

Catherine just shook her head, and neither spoke again.

When they carried the tea trays into the dining room, Marie and Charlotte were giggling wildly.

"Thank heavens!" Rance said. "Hurry—some tea to tame the savage beasts."

Cynthia laughed outright at the sight. Even Catherine had to smile. Rance was huddled beneath the table, while Marie and Charlotte pranced round it like victorious hunters who had captured their prey at long last.

"We've trapped him, Cynthia," Marie cried.

"Well, of course he's just _pretending_," Charlotte was quick to add. "We couldn't really." She was determined to sound as grown-up as possible, though it was obvious that two seconds ago she had been as keen on the game as her younger sister.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Rance declared, climbing out as Cynthia set the tray on the table. "I was quite trapped, I assure you."

Marie whooped jubilantly. Charlotte looked a little miffed that she was considered young enough to buy into such nonsense, but Rance won her over with a conspiratorial wink. Charlotte liked the idea of playing along to entertain five-year-old Marie; it made her one of the adults.

Cynthia watched it all with an incredulous smile. At the start, Rance had not been at ease around her little sisters, but now the three seemed as comfortable as a family. And quite a family they made. The girls were round and rosy, with honeyed curls, while Rance was angular and raven-haired, with eyes so dark that they seemed to swallow all the light around him. The word _family_ pricked Cynthia's mind, and she pushed it away, though she deeply desired to embrace it. The sense of trembling, terrified hope that it invoked was almost too much to bear, but she loved the weight of it on her chest.

At that moment, she decided to cling to it, despite realism—despite the imminence of disappointment. Perhaps Miss Catherine Carver could live without hope, but Cynthia Ellers could not. It was the only lifeline she had left.


	9. Chapter 9

Adrian was pleasantly surprised to discover that the stone stairs led to the very top of the tower. In fact, the saber in his hand felt wholly absurd now, for there had been no more obstacles to overcome, save a few crumbling steps. It occurred to him that maybe the curse was weakening as it reached the end of the century. Maybe since Rosamond was _supposed_ to be saved today, then the curse would not resist.

All the same, he could not swallow a sense of dread as he pushed open the door at the top of the steps. It was unlocked and swung fluidly on its hinges. The bedchamber he found himself in was mottled with cool light and stark shadows. The rug was plush beneath his feet, and he couldn't shake the idea that there was something odd about the space.

Then it occurred to him: the room was as clean and pristine as if it had only been furnished yesterday. The ravages of the century had left it utterly unaffected. Adrian took stock of the room quickly, but could see nothing that would pose a threat. There was an armoire, a settee, and a simple wooden bedside table. The furnishings were fine, but not incredibly lavish. The bed, however, was a magnificent monstrosity. The bedposts were mahogany and ornately carved. Thick velvet draperies were drawn closed.

Adrian took a step toward it, still nursing a sense of dread. The shadows in the room were still, as shadows ought to be, but they were inexplicably sinister. Adrian did not suffer from over-imagination, but he knew that _he_ would not want to sleep with those shadows lurking so menacingly.

The sudden thought that Rosamond had not had a choice in any of this is what drove him forward to pull back the bed curtains.

And there she slept, the breathing tableau of a century past. Golden locks framed her lovely face like a portrait, and only a slight frown twisted her exquisite features. Adrian found himself breathless at the sight of her. Maybe it was the excitement of the moment, of the fulfillment of months of preparation, but more likely it was the sheer perfection of her. Adrian had not thought forward to this moment, but now that it was here he felt quite confident.

For once in his life, it was not the numbers from the book that ran through his head, but rather the words from the best-known version of the tale.

_And when he saw her looking so lovely in her sleep, he could not turn away his eyes; and presently he stooped and kissed her…_

Something deep and distant in his mind reminded him that the stirring in his chest was the workings of the curse. Catherine had warned him repeatedly of it. The sudden, undeniable urge to press his mouth against Rosamond's supple lips was merely the old magic, having its way with him, and he should not lose control.

_I should step out and clear my head,_ he thought vaguely, as the saber dropped from his hand.

But he found that he couldn't move away, and without a second thought he stooped and kissed her.

Nothing, for an eternal moment, and then in a flash Adrian came to himself. He was quite surprised to find that Rosamond was kissing him back. He pulled back, but she dove at him, thrusting her arms around his neck and pressing her lips hungrily against his.

Adrian's head reeled at the abrupt dissolution of the curse's hold and at the young woman pressing herself against him so determinedly that she might have been trying to merge their bodies. He managed to pry her away enough to see her face. Her irises were very pale blue and striking against her pupils. There was no innocence in them, though. They possessed a quality that was eerily old—a century old, perhaps. It was clear that behind her young and pretty face, there was a hard and determined creature of unimaginable depth. She might have slept for the past century, but she had lived every second of it.

"I'm sorry, miss," Adrian said haltingly, lost for anything else to say. He tried to disentangle himself completely, but she refused to be moved.

"Don't apologize," she said, her voice tinged with desperation. "I haven't waited a hundred years for an apology." She threw her mouth against his again, and Adrian found himself wondering what exactly she _had_ been waiting for.

Her kiss was too violently desperate to be pleasurable, and as Adrian pushed her away, more firmly this time, he felt certain that his mouth was bruised. He took several quick steps backwards.

"Miss, please—"

"You have come this far; you've defeated the sorceress. You've awakened me with your noble kiss, and yet you do not wish to take what is yours?"

She paused in front of the armoire mirror, as if struck by the notion that he was not pleased by her appearance. A brief stock of her slender neck and shapely curves, accentuated by her satin brocade gown, assured her that this was not the case. She continued towards Adrian with slow, almost feline steps, and Adrian couldn't help but feel that he was being stalked as prey.

"You're mistaken," he said, heat rising on the back of his neck. "I've only come to awaken you—nothing else."

She took one graceful leap forward and wrapped her arm around his neck.

"Prithee, prince, what is your name?" Her tones were soft and dulcet, almost a purr, and Adrian felt the heat wash down his back. She brought her lips to his cheek, more delicately now, yet somehow more determined—and infinitely more enjoyable.

"Adrian Dacre…not a prince…" he said indistinctly, thinking hazily that he would not mind at all if this princess were his true love.

She wasn't fazed by his confession, and her kisses strayed closer to his lips. One delicate hand rested demurely on his chest, and her nimble fingers made quick work of the first button on his shirt. Adrian leaned into her kiss, his conscience swimming dizzily in the ethereal moment.

Something broke in the air.

It was somehow tangible and nearly audible. Rosamond drew back with a gasp.

"What happened?" she demanded. "Something has changed."

Adrian shook his head numbly, still trapped in the muddled passion of a moment earlier.

"I'm free—I think," Rosamond said. "The old sorceress is really gone. You've slain her for me, haven't you?"

She started to drape her arm around his neck again, but Adrian had managed to regain some control of his faculties. He moved away from her instinctively.

"The old sorceress has been dead for a long time," he told her. "My name is Adrian Dacre, and I've just come to bring the curse to its proper end. It's my profession, of sorts."

"Profession?" She smiled. "But you're a prince."

"I'm _not_ a prince. Catherine Carver solicited my help to awaken you."

"And who is that?"

"She's the guardian of—"

"Oh, I don't care a wit, really." She lunged forward again, and Adrian barely managed to catch her arms before they encircled him again.

"You don't even know me, miss," he said firmly. "You're just a little dazed, that's all."

"Dazed?" She laughed—a sweet, melodious sound. "I've never felt more awake in my life. You've saved me, Adrian Dacre. I know that I am pleasing to you. So, come, let us celebrate my awakening."

Adrian blanched. His head was quite clear now, and he felt grossly ashamed of his earlier weakness.

"Certainly not," he said, moving past her toward the door. "We must go see Catherine."

"Oh, fine," she said huffily. "You've ruined the romance of it anyway. I've spent so long perfecting the dream, too. I _had_ hoped my prince would be a better sport."

"I'm not a prince, yours or otherwise." He also wanted to point out that there was very little romanticism in two complete strangers throwing themselves at each other in a cursed tower, but he held his tongue. Perhaps such a scenario had been romantic a hundred years ago.

"Well, I'm certainly not walking down all those steps. You shall have to carry me." She crossed her arms. With her lofty expression, she suddenly seemed less a delicate angel of delight and more a petulant, snobbish child.

Adrian began to think that what he had mistaken for depth in her eyes was just a very defined sense of self-importance.

"_Carry_ you?" he echoed.

"Oh, let me have a bit of romance, you brute. I've been waiting so terribly long."

Adrian did not know how to answer that, and so he just nodded. Rosamond jumped gleefully into his arms. She was surprisingly heavy, but that was probably the ornate, old-fashioned dress she was wearing.

He started down the stairs, remembering too late the stitches in his left arm. The wound was burning horribly with the strain, and he realized that he had probably ripped the stitches. Rosamond, with her arms wrapped tightly round his neck, remained blissfully unaware of his discomfort, and he was getting the feeling that she wouldn't have cared anyway. All that mattered to her at the moment was her romantic descent from her prison.

And so the man who was not a prince carried the girl who had once been a princess into the brilliant sunshine for the first time in a century. Rosamond's laughter was free and joyous and even more melodic than the birdsong.

* * *

In Catherine's cottage, she and her four guests sat in silence, sipping tea and wondering to themselves what today's outcome would be. Surely Adrian would succeed. With the sun shining so splendidly in the azure sky, tragedy seemed impossible. Catherine had even allowed herself a smidgen of hope. Tomorrow she would buy the train ticket. Tomorrow she would leave this place.

But maybe not forever. Maybe she had a reason to come back now. The hope made her feel giddy, and she swallowed a mouthful of tea to calm herself.

"This is maddening," Rance said, shoving his teacup away. "It shouldn't have taken this long."

"I'm worried too," Cynthia said. "Isn't there some way we can help him?"

"The curse is very set in its way," Catherine said stoutly. "If more than one person tries to enter the tower, then the results would be deadly. Only one can awaken the princess."

"And so Adrian gets to play the white knight again," Rance said flatly.

"Mr. Dacre is a knight?" Marie asked excitedly.

"Shhh." Catherine hissed, rising to her feet. Her cheeks were heightened with color. "I think…yes…I've just felt something change."

"She's awake?" Rance asked.

Catherine's face was flaming crimson with emotion, and the expression on her face was a mixture of elation and disbelief.

"She is...I can't believe it's really happened."

"Thank heavens," Cynthia said.

Catherine lurched forward suddenly, grasping at the table's edge.

"What's wrong?" Cynthia jumped to her feet.

Catherine's eyes were darting back and forth, and all elation was gone from her stern, round features.

"I think I've misjudged something," she said hoarsely, and fell to the floor.


	10. Chapter 10

The day of Catherine's funeral was bursting with sunshine, though the air was still cold with winter's first chill. A brisk, fragrant breeze drifted through the graveyard, mingling with the priest's droning eulogy. Adrian and Rance were the only two mourners present, since Rosamond had refused outright and Cynthia had yet to arrive.

It didn't seem right to Adrian.

Surely the world should have felt the loss of Catherine Carver more keenly than this. She was not a particularly nice person, but she was remarkable all the same, and more people should have noticed her death with sorrow. Something should have changed with her passing.

At the very least, the sun could have had the decency not to shine so cheerfully.

As the coffin was lowered, the priest asked Adrian and Rance if either of them would like to say a few words. The very notion seemed ludicrous. To remember Catherine to a disinterested priest and the hired pallbearers—it would be a useless gesture of idiotic sentiment. Catherine would not approve. Both Adrian and Rance shook their heads no.

The priest bid them good day and left, and the grave keeper began to shovel dirt. Adrian read the freshly carved headstone once more: _Here lies_ _Catherine Jane Carver_, _1807-1837_

It was her last legacy, and Adrian couldn't help but wonder if his would be any better. After all, she had no mourners because she had spent her life as a prisoner to the those six numbers that spelled out Rosamond's curse. Adrian had spent his life as a prisoner to hundreds and hundreds of such sequences. He had helped stories to their proper end, but had he ever really helped anyone? Thanks to him, Harriet was married to a man who knew nothing about her, Snow White and the doctor would live a life based on a lie, and Mrs. Hadley would soon learn that her husband was incapable of choosing her over the bottle. He was nothing but a builder of false hope, because "happily ever after" had disappeared with the magic.

Maybe it would be better to let these people find their own endings.

"Cynthia said she would be here," Rance said, jarring Adrian from his morose thoughts.

"Maybe she forgot." As soon as he said it, Adrian realized how impossible that was. Cynthia was more distraught over Catherine's sudden death than anyone, and she never could have forgotten the funeral. He looked at Rance and saw that worry had darkened his eyes. "You should go after her."

Rance seemed about to agree, but hesitated.

"No, you should go," he said dully. "I'm sure she would rather find you on her doorstep."

Adrian licked his chapped lips, wondering how he could verbalize the opinion he'd been keeping to himself for a while now.

"No, I think she would much prefer you."

Rance looked sideways at him and shoved his hands into the pockets of his greatcoat.

"She's too good for me," he said, understanding exactly what Adrian wasn't saying. "For heaven's sake, I make Lothario look like Saint Peter."

"But you said it yourself, Rance—you've changed. No more Miss Greens or Miss Harrises."

"Too little too late, don't you think?" Rance said, his tone wildly cynical. "Cynthia would never have me."

"I think you should let her decide that for herself," Adrian said firmly.

Rance was silent for a moment.

"All right," he said at length, his voice soft with uncertainty.

"Take the coach," Adrian told him. "I'll walk home."

Rance murmured "Thank you" and lengthened his strides toward the coach at the far end of the grassy graveyard. Adrian watched his friend for a while in contemplation, and then turned toward the little dirt path that served as a shortcut into town. His footsteps were heavy and his muscles tight in the early morning chill. His left arm still ached steadily. A doctor had seen to the stitches, but Adrian would be lucky to heal without a permanent scar.

Movement under a large oak tree off the path caught his eye. A girl was seated on a blanket out of the glaring sun, though she was bundled against the chill. In her arms she rocked an infant, equally bundled. Her face was glowing with obvious joy as she whispered sweet nothings into the infant's ear.

The sight arrested Adrian, not only because of its quaint charm, but because he recognized the girl.

"Rapunzel?"

She looked up sharply at her name and eyed him with suspicion.

"Do I know you, sir?"

Adrian mentally berated himself. Of course she wouldn't know him, and he could hardly tell her that he recognized her from the nights he had spent watching her window.

"I knew Madame Gothel," he said, hoping she wouldn't inquire further.

"Oh," she said faintly, and looked back down at her child. She was apparently not interested in continuing the conversation, but Adrian wasn't prepared to just leave.

"Forgive me," he started carefully. "But I heard you ran away from home?"

"Well, I had to, didn't I?" she snapped. "That mad woman was starving me, and heaven knows that John wasn't going to take up responsibility for…for…" She stopped and glanced at her baby.

"Well, it was just time for me to take responsibility for myself," she finished.

"You've been doing well?" Adrian inquired lightly. She looked healthy enough, and her child too. Their clothes were homespun, but adequate to meet the coming winter.

"It was difficult at first," she said, running a finger delicately across the infant's cheek. "But I managed to find work and board as a maid in town. The lady of the house simply adores my little Gloria—she never had children of her own. We couldn't be happier."

Adrian could scarcely believe it. It was almost impossible to reconcile his recent cynicism with this picture of happiness before him. What was more—Rapunzel had found herself a happy ending _without_ his help.

"I'm glad you found one…" he said softly.

"Beg pardon?"

Adrian realized that his verbal musings were not exactly coherent.

"I'm glad you found a happy ending," he clarified.

Rapunzel's brow knitted in confusion.

"An ending? I'm only fifteen years old, sir. I've barely even begun."

The beautiful simplicity of her outlook struck some chords in Adrian's heart, and clarity suddenly descended upon him like an angelic revelation. He had been so sure that his destiny lay in giving characters their happy endings, but somewhere along the way he had forgotten that he was not dealing with characters. He was dealing with real people—people whose endings could not be determined by him. Perhaps Rapunzel was right; perhaps it was time for everyone to take responsibility for their own lives.

Freedom glinted momentarily through a veil of fear and uncertainty, but it vanished just as quickly. Adrian simply could not conceive a life apart from the book. Surely he could never be free.

"Well, we really must be going," Rapunzel said. "It was nice to meet you, Mister…?"

"Dacre. Adrian Dacre." He barely realized that he was giving his real name. Of course, it hardly mattered in this case. Rapunzel owed nothing to him. She had saved herself.

Despite the aching despair that slowly encompassed him, Adrian felt a spark of hope deep in his heart—so deep that he didn't know if he could ever retrieve it.

* * *

With her head ducked low and her ears stinging with her father's curses, Cynthia ran out the front door. Her eyes were brimming with tears, and the world around her swam dizzily. Her toe caught a rut, and she flew forward, arms splayed wildly in anticipation of the hard ground.

She fell into Rance instead.

"Mr. Harper!" she cried breathlessly. "What are you doing here?" She found her footing and pulled away from him, wiping fiercely at her eyes.

"Cynthia, what happened?" he demanded. "You look—"

"Miss Carver's funeral! I can't believe I missed it! I just—" she broke off, pushing some loose hair fretfully behind her ear. "Something came up, and I couldn't get away." Her cheeks burned scarlet with shame and the sensation of her father's blows.

"Something came up, did it?" Rance looked past her to the front door of her modest home. It swung forlornly on its hinges, and the sounds of her father's raging temper could still be heard. "Where are Marie and Charlotte?"

"Next door with Mrs. Godwin."

"How could you come back here?" Rance's voice was quietly disbelieving, and his dark eyes searched her face.

"Where else could I go?" she asked bitterly. "I'm a single woman with two young girls in tow. I make enough with Mr. Dacre to not be considered destitute, so even the poorhouses won't have me. There is nowhere for me or my sisters."

"There is with me."

Cynthia looked up sharply. Rance's cheeks were flushed, and his brow was stitched with anxiety. She had never seen him like that before, but she was sure that she had misunderstood—until he repeated himself.

"You have a place with me, Cynthia." There was an indefinable note in his voice, something between fear and desire.

It was all she could do to remain master of herself. She broke painfully from his gaze.

"Mr. Harper, I can't—"

"Please don't say it." He sounded so vulnerable, that she had to look again to his face. He was staring hard at their feet. She wanted to lift his chin, to kiss his lips, to embrace him and let him carry her away from here forever. She wanted a thousand things.

But they simply could not be.

"You're missing a shoe," he said suddenly.

Cynthia glanced down, and her cheeks felt hot again. She looked little better than a street urchin, while he was so sharp in his black coat, crisp white shirt, and silk black cravat. Surely any feelings he thought he had for her arose only out of pity.

"Let me fetch it for you," he said.

"No, don't!" The words flew from her mouth, and she realized too late that they carried every ounce of terror she possessed for that house and the man inside.

Rance watched her in silence, and something changed in his features. A shadow of anger passed over them, followed by a stiff determination.

"Wait in the carriage, please, Miss Ellers."

"No, Rance, don't. You can't go in there." She was begging by now, but he was already disappearing into the darkness of the house's interior. Cynthia willed herself to follow, but the fear in her gut made her knees weak and useless. So she stood and waited in a mute state of horror, unable to retreat to the carriage, but unable to follow after Rance.

Only a minute passed, but it might as well have been an eternity.

Then her father's nastiest curses deafened the neighborhood, the door swung open, and Rance flew face first onto the dirt path.

"You infuriating fool!" she wailed, once she had dropped down beside him and assured herself that he was still conscious and breathing. "I was so worried! What were you thinking?"

"Nothing too rational, apparently," he said, sitting up and smiling weakly. His cravat was torn, and his white shirt was soiled with dirt. "Your father is a rather large man."

"You're horrible," Cynthia murmured, rocking back on her heels. Her head was light with intense relief mingled with hesitant gratification. "But your face—what did you _say_ to him?" She reached out impulsively and brushed her fingers across the swelling beneath his eye, which was already starting to darken.

Rance reached up and took her hand.

"I asked him if I could marry you."

Cynthia giggled reactively, but nearly choked when she saw that he was perfectly serious.

"What?" she whispered.

"He punched me and threw me out the front door as a reply, so I'm just going to assume that he is violently happy for us both."

"Rance, no." Cynthia stood up, shaking her head vehemently. "I can't. What of my sisters?"

"In case you haven't noticed, I'm obscenely rich. They'll never want for anything, I promise. I'll give you the world, if that's what you want." He pulled himself up to one knee and took her hand again. His eyes were afire with passionate desperation.

"I don't want the world," she said tremblingly. She wanted him. She wanted _him_. But she tugged her hand away. Something inside of her held back, despite the raging tempest in her heart.

"I don't deserve you," Rance said. "I know that. But you have to believe that I love you, that I'll do anything—everything—to make you happy. Cynthia, please." He broke off, struggling for breath.

Cynthia could have laughed aloud. _He _didn't deserve _her_? He, Lawrence Harper, who had the secret affections of half the girls in the city, who had enough money to pay dowries for them all, thought that he wasn't good enough for her, Cynthia Ellers, bastard daughter of a Romani gypsy, whose sole purpose in life was to provide funding for her father's innumerable vices.

"You're mad," she said.

"Is that a yes?" he asked hopefully.

"You'll never be able to show your face in proper society again."

"I've spent the last ten years in social reclusion with Adrien Dacre—I don't even remember what 'proper society' looks like."

Hope swelled in Cynthia's chest, and every part of her was prepared to accept. But still she held back. This couldn't be real—any of it. She wasn't a princess in a fairy tale, and though she loved him dearly, Rance was certainly not a noble prince.

But did that mean they were perfect for each other?

Rance watched her hesitate and spoke again:

"Please, just tell me what you need from me, Cynthia. Whatever it is, you'll have it."

There was no doubt within her that this was right. The only misgivings in her spirit were born of the self-loathing that had been her father's only gift to her in a lifetime. Cynthia swallowed hard and called upon every ounce of hope and fire she possessed.

"You can start by giving me my other shoe," she said. "I'll need both if I'm to make a proper bride."

Rance's eyes were bright with a dazed disbelief. His hands were trembling as he picked up the old leather shoe, which was half-detached from its sole. It was not the fabled slipper made from glass, but it slipped perfectly onto her foot all the same.


	11. Chapter 11

In his study, Adrian was feeling strangely suffocated. It was probably due to Rosamond, who had refused to stay in the cottage by the tower, though it was, oddly enough, leased under her name. She had also refused Adrian's offer to find her a charity room in the local church. In fact, she refused to do anything but lounge on the settee in his study, sighing often from boredom and generally distracting him.

In other words, Rance had been replaced by an exceedingly lovely female counterpart.

Adrian had tried to explain to her about her reputation, but she had disregarded him with a lofty wave of her hand. It occurred to him that having, in all practical terms, come back to life after a hundred years, Rosamond did not have a reputation to ruin—she scarcely existed at all. It was _his_ reputation that would suffer if word of her residence at his house starting spreading. He too scarcely existed in local society, but the little that anyone knew about him was that he was a respectable gentleman. Rosamond did not seem to care about that either.

"Where were you today?" she asked, with a pouting look that Adrian had learned to resent, since it was inevitably augmented by her moving to perch on the edge of the desk and lean disturbingly close. This time proved no exception.

"Catherine's funeral. I told you that," he said, leaning back in his chair to be free from her unsettling pale blue gaze and, what was more, the delicious warm scent that seemed to always radiate from her.

"But I was horribly bored," she said, frowning as he moved away. "Who is she anyway?"

"I told you that too. She was the one who guarded you as you slept."

"_Her_? Well, thank the stars _she's_ dead."

"Don't say that." Adrian stared at her, feeling a lick of fire rouse under his temper. "You didn't even know her."

"Of course I knew her, silly." Rosamond mistook the intention of his stare as something else entirely and batted her eyelashes at him. "That grey old hag at that wretched spinning wheel. I've dreamt of that hideous face for years."

"That's not her." Adrian shook his head numbly. He hated that hag as much as Rosamond did. Maybe more. She had started all this over a wounded ego, and Catherine would be alive today, if…but he couldn't even imagine it. "Her name is—was Catherine Carver. She found a way to save you at the curse's end."

"So she brought _you_ to me?" Rosamond's smile was somehow demure and predatory at the same time. Her hair fell across her shoulder in a rippling gold stream as she leaned in slightly—just near enough that Adrian found himself trapped in that piercing stare again, unable to break away.

He nodded weakly, knowing where this was going and wishing—albeit vaguely—that there was a way to stop it.

"What a dear," Rosamond said absently, twisting a strand of gold between two slender fingers. "I shall have to meet her some day."

"She's _dead_."

"Oh, right. You mentioned that, didn't you?" She tried on a pitying smile, but it did not suit her mood. She switched to coy and took his hand in hers. "Well, let the dead bury their dead."

With those words, her spell was broken. Adrian yanked his hand away and stood up so quickly that his chair spun away and clattered onto its side.

"She died for you!" he cried. "And I don't know if it makes it better or worse that she didn't want to, but it certainly doesn't make it all right."

"So what?" Rosamond stood as well, drawing herself to her full height, which was almost even with his. "Do you think that uptight, stubby-armed pig could have ever lived a life worth anything?"

Adrian was taken aback by her confident and challenging tone.

"You did know her, didn't you."

"Of course I didn't _know_ her. But I was linked to her just like that old cow before her and the wretched hag before _her_. I dreamed of her often, saw the things that she saw, felt the things that she felt. All her despair and self-hatred and high hopes for the future." Rosamond sniggered, turning her pretty features foul. "Would you believe that she actually thought she had a chance with you?"

Adrian just stared, aghast and lost for words.

"It was pitiful actually," she continued. "And downright disgusting. I was trapped in that tower, and she was daydreaming about running away with my prince."

"I'm not your prince," Adrian said, catching his breath. He rounded the desk and headed for the door. "I've told you—"

"Don't be silly." She stepped in front of him, deliberately close. "I'm the princess, and you saved me. It's the way the story ends."

Adrian could feel the fragrant heat of her body merging with his own. Her lips were full and pouting and glistening. For a moment, just a moment, he felt the urge to pull her in and kiss her. Maybe that was the way the story ended…

But then his mind caught up with the rest of him, and he stepped backwards.

"I'm afraid you'll have to find a different ending, Miss Rosamond," he said, matching her relentless glare. "I will call the coach for you. There is a local church down the road that will gladly take you in, or I'll tell the driver to take you to your cottage. Either way, this is where our acquaintance ends."

Rosamond let out a small shriek of rage and slapped him.

"How dare you?" she cried. "I'm a princess, and I'm offering you _myself_."

"A 'thank you' will suffice," Adrian said coldly, pulling open the study door.

She shrieked again, and all the beauty of her face was overcome by wrath.

"You would have married _her_, then? That prim and proper cow? Is that it?"

Adrian closed his eyes, policing his short, angry breaths.

"I don't know the answer to that," he said finally. His voice was dangerously soft. "But I do know that I would choose her over you every time."

She slapped him again, but Adrian did not budge. The stairwell echoed with her fury, the front door slammed, and Rosamond was gone.

Adrian whirled around and paced in front of his desk for a few seconds, battling with the slough of emotions in his chest. The open book on his desk caught his eye, and he stopped to stare at it. He was halfway finished recording this most recent sequence of numbers, but had stopped at the ending. How could he ever capture Catherine's death in simple numbers? And even if he could, would he want to? It seemed so wrong.

All at once, everything seemed wrong to him. In a fit of passion, he snatched up the book and hurled it at the wall. He swiped an arm across his desk, knocking all the tools of his peculiar profession to the floor. He snatched up the fire poker and began stoking the embers in the fireplace, drawing strength as the flames drew oxygen and leapt to life.

He took up the book, and for one wild moment he felt perfectly free to throw it to the flames. For a brief, beguiling moment, the passion in his chest called forth the hope that had been buried for so long. Maybe tonight could be the night. Maybe tonight he could start his life anew, apart from the wretched _Grimmoire_.

But the passion died as the flames grew hotter, and he felt gripped by familiar helplessness. With a heavy heart, he began to replace the items on his desk, one by one. Wasn't he here every night—wishing to be rid of the accursed book, but never having the strength to feed it to the fire, never having the strength to be free of it forever?

Why should tonight be any different?

* * *

Rance poked his head cautiously around the study door. Adrian was facing the fireplace, hands clasped behind his back. The red flames were the only light in the room, and the walls danced with shadows.

"She's gone then?" Rance asked hopefully, peering around the study.

"Several hours ago," Adrian replied distantly.

"Well, thank goodness. She was a real piece of work, eh?" Rance slipped into the room and stood, waiting for Adrian to turn around.

Adrian still stared at the fire, not seeming to register that his friend, who had earlier gone to pursue the woman he loved, had returned. Rance shifted impatiently from one foot to the other, practically bursting with the glorious news, but Adrian was lost in a different world.

At length, Rance realized that Adrian was dealing with something intense and private. He decided to wait to share the news. There would be plenty of time for champagne and celebration at a later date.

"Here," he said, fumbling with a torn sheet of paper folded in his greatcoat. "I forgot to give this to you earlier. I know you didn't want to see any of the papers they gathered from Catherine's home, but I thought you needed to see this one."

Adrian didn't say anything, so Rance put it on the neatly organized desk. He lingered a few more seconds, but it was increasingly obvious that Adrian would not soon be coming back from wherever in his mind he had gone. Rance waved uselessly in farewell and left. The door clicked shut behind him.

Adrian swallowed hard, determined not to look at the paper Rance had left. But soon the fire grew unbearably hot on his face, and he had to turn away. The wrinkled paper, many times folded and unfolded, rested innocuously on the desk. Biting his lip, Adrian reached out and took it.

He scanned it quickly, as if too long a look would turn him to stone. What stood out the most was a hastily scrawled paragraph at the bottom, not in Catherine's handwriting.

_Found something unsettling today. Fear that the guardian can only live while the curse does. When Rosamond awakes, will it all be over? Can't tell Catherine. She is too young. _

Adrian felt a wave of nausea and crumpled the page in his fist. He had suspected it was something like that. As far as they could tell, Catherine had fallen dead at the exact moment he kissed Rosamond awake. If he had only known…

But he hadn't, and neither had Catherine. And now it was all over.

Hopelessness and guilt threatened to overtake him, but he flung them aside determinedly and flung the paper into the fire. It was over, all of it, and there was nothing to do but move forward.

Despite the phantom emptiness he felt in his chest, he would move forward. Hope swelled, igniting his whole being with a freedom that was glorious and overwhelming.

Adrian basked in the warmth of the crackling flames for a few more minutes, and then he left the study and went downstairs to fetch his greatcoat. He needed to find Rance and Cynthia and buy them both a celebratory drink. The outside world of lights and laughter beckoned temptingly, and Adrian was truly ready to give in and start his life anew.

Behind him, the top left drawer of his desk lay open and empty. Finally empty.

The fire burned through the night.


End file.
